Alex's Rise to Championship
by masked1
Summary: Okay, new summary. This story is about a thirteen year old boy and his friends who decide to leave their home and become pokemon champions. No contestshipping or any other relationship stuff like that.
1. Beginning a long journey

The alarm clock went off but not for long as a hand had instantly slammed the snooze button by instinct. A young teenager yawned and pushed himself up and got out of bed. He went over to his dresser and collected his clothes for the day, which he didn't have much to choose from since most of it was packed in his bag, and proceeded out into the hall.

He then picked out a towel from a closet then went to the bathroom to take a shower. After putting down his stuff he looked in the mirror to see his short black hair in a mess, due to tossing and turning in his sleep last night for he was excited. Why was he excited? Because he was about to start his pokemon journey.

This is Alex, a thirteen year old boy who was going with his three friends, Lucas, Quinton, and Derek, on a journey to become master trainers. They were going to get there first pokemon today from the famous Prof. Oak who just so happens to live in Pallet Town like them. They had waited for this day for a long time after talking it over with the professor and their parents, and after there approval Oak had taught them the basics of being a trainer to the four boys, the different items and their purposes, how to use a pokeball, etc.

Alex quickly took his shower and dressed after drying off, then headed downstairs for breakfast. His parents knew he was waking up early so they made the effort to get up and make breakfast, (pancakes), at 6:30 in the morning. Even his little sister, Teresa, somehow managed to wake up for this special day, to give Alex a bag she had packed with the clothes he had given her, along with other supplies like Potions and Antidotes.

"Good morning!" Alex said cheerfully as he strode into the kitchen.

"Mornin'" his dad said sleepily, he was not really a morning person.

"Good morning!" his mom replied as she stood by the oven, making the pancakes. Teresa greeted as well but it came out unintelligible because she was yawning.

"Are you ready for today?" his mom asked as she piled two pancakes onto a plate.

"I've been ready for a long time!" Alex said.

"That's good, but remember don't rush this morning, spend some time with us before you go."

"I know, I know," he said as his mom handed him the pancakes.

"So do you know what you'll pick?" his dad asked. He was talking about the three starters you choose from that Oak always hands out: Squirtle, the water type, Charmander, the fire type, or Bulbasaur, the grass type.

"You know, I've talked about it with my friends, and we can't really pick, they're all cool, but there's also a fourth one Oak is showing because there's four of us. We're just going to see what we pick when we get to Oak's lab." Alex said. They talked more over breakfast to Alex, telling him to be safe and have fun, contact them when he can, and whether he plans to travel with his friends.

"Well, we thought about it at first, choosing whether we should go in a group or go alone, and we decided since we're all heading to Pewter City for the first gym we'll go there together, but after that we are going at our own pace from then on." Alex explained.

"Okay, it's a good thing you'll have your pokemon with you, or I'd be worried," his mom said humorously.

"Don't worry about me! Now I think I should be going," Alex said. His family all gave him hugs and with that he left to meet his friends.

He found Derek and Lucas walking up the road ahead of him, so he ran up to greet his friends.

"Hey!" Alex shouted several feet behind them, making them jump.

"Geez! What was that for?" Derek asked as he whipped his head around.

"Just wanting to say hi!" Alex smiled stupidly.

"You scared us!" Lucas exclaimed, brushing back his hair, which was different in a certain way. It was black, like Alex's, but not the same shade, somehow, it seemed to have a bluish tint to it, but it was a natural thing, and it grew spiky, so people sometimes mistake him for a punk, which he was definitely not.

"That's what I was aiming for!" he replied. "So have you guys seen Quinton?"

"No, I would imagine he'd want to be the first to be there, so he might be waiting for us, let's go," Derek said. Alex shrugged and they moved on up the hilly road. They chatted, talking about if they'll actually make a decision for their starters and in no time made it to the gates to the lab. (Derek was also right, Quinton stood there at the gates with his arms crossed).

"It's about time you guys got here!" he chided.

"Well we had to say our goodbyes!" Alex snapped back. Although it sounded like arguing the four never really got angry at each other, it's just there ideas of a joke.

"No time for talking! Let's get going!" Derek said. Nobody argued because they all wanted to move on, so they opened the gates and walked through to the lab.

It was a modest building, not what you'd expect of the world famous Prof. Oak. It had the shape of a hangar but was made of the same materials like any other house, with a short tower shaped building next to it, where the real research is done, but that wasn't all. Behind the house was a large and beautiful field where many pokemon from all over Kanto roamed. These were all pokemon Oak studied and took care of. All of them couldn't help but gaze at the view for a while even though they had something important to do, it was just something you couldn't pass over.

Lucas was the first to speak, "Well, we can't keep staring, let's go!" The others followed him into the tower through the automatic doors and entered the technological place in all of Pallet Town.

Machines lined the walls and filled in the center, many assisstants of Prof. Oak bustled about, carrying clipboards or something else except one man who came up to the boys.

"Hello! You must be the new trainers," he said. They nodded. "Well then, come with me into the back, Prof. Oak is waiting."

They walked with him through an open doorway and into a less busy room, there were some machines but not as impressive as the ones in the room before, and a table in the center with four balls, each one half red one half white, with a black line around the middle, pokeballs.

A man was behind the table, the Prof. Oak. He had on a lab coat with a red shirt underneath, khaki brown pants, and dark brown shoes.

"It's good to see you!" he greeted, "Are you ready to take your first step on your journey?"

"Oh yes!" Lucas said.

Oak nodded, "Good, good, now within these four pokeballs are the pokemon you may choose from, I'll open them up for you to see." He picked the four devices up and held them awkwardly in his hands before tossing them up in the air. At the height of their time in the air they all popped open and a white energy flashed out of them. These beams of energy began to take shape on the table and gain color. What appeared was a light blue turtle with a brown shell and cream underbelly with a thick light blue tail in the back that ended with a curl, an orange lizard that stood on two feet and had a flame on the tip of it's tail that didn't seem to bother it, a quadrupedal light green reptilish creature with a large plant bulb on it's back, and another four legged creature that was a pinkish purple color and a little rodent-like in appearance with it's large ears.

Oak pointed to the turtle, "This is Squirtle," then the lizard, "Charmander," the green creature, "Bulbasaur," and the purple pokemon, "and Nidoran."

"Ooh, now that I get to see them more closely I think Charmander looks pretty cool! And Nidoran seems pretty cool too!" Alex commented. Both mentioned pokemon held their heads up high in pride, Bulbasaur seemed like it didn't hear that, but Squirtle looked a little sad.

Alex noticed this, "But you're pretty good too! I just think I might pick one of them!"

"Pick carefully!" Oak said.

Lucas leaned in closer at Bulbasaur, "You guys wouldn't mind if I took Bulbasaur?"

The other three looked at each other than Quinton said, "You made the first real decision, so go ahead."

"Awesome! I pick Bulbasaur professor," Lucas said.

"Excellent!" Oak remarked, then handed him Bulbasaur's pokeball.

"Well nobody said anything about Squirtle, so I'm going to go ahead with that one!"

"Alright, here's it's pokeball," Oak did the same as with Lucas.

"Well Alex, I'm kind of stuck between these two, so I'll let you choose because I'd be happy with either one," Quinton said to him.

Alex looked at the two remaining pokemon, he thought both of them were awesome, but couldn't decide. He looked at Nidoran, saw that it looked neutral about him, like it didn't care if he picked him or not, and then at Charmander, and in it's eyes he saw this look of wanting, like it wanted him to choose it. He felt weird, as if something in him was responding to that wanting, like he too wanted to be with Charmander, as if they could become friends. He made his decision.

"Professor, I choose Charmander!" he declared. Charmander cheered at this, and Oak handed him it's pokeball.

"Then that means I get Nidoran!" Quinton said. Nidoran gave a sound of happiness, and Alex felt a little dissapointed that it didn't seem to care if he chose it, but was happy for his friend choosing it. Oh well, some pokemon are just different than others.

After Oak handed Quinton his pokeball he looked at all of them, "Now, you have just chosen your first pokemon, and although it might not seem all very important, in the long run it affects the paths your lives will take, and I hope you'll come to appreciate your decisions if you do not now. And speaking of pokemon, I'd like each of you to take five empty pokeballs so you may catch wild pokemon."

The assisstant that brought them in came up with a cardboard box containing many empty pokeballs. Each one of them carefully picked five out and thanked Prof. Oak.

"Your welcome, but that's not all, what I have next for you are devices called pokedex's, point them at new pokemon and you'll collect data about them, it is partly for my research, but it will also help you understand more about pokemon. I hope you don't have a problem with the limited colors though," he told them as he walked back and returned with a tray holding four devices. They were all rectangular and had a round blue light bulb at the top, but there was also a hinge on it so it must flip open. They were all a different color: A very bright Yellow, a dark Green, a dusty Brown, and a bright blue the color of Cyan.

"No problem, this shouldn't be as hard as picking our starters," Alex said. Since nobody else said otherwise he went ahead and picked the cyan one while Derek went for the yellow. Quinton took the brown colored one right before Lucas lifted the green dex off the tray.

"Now then," Oak began, "one last thing, when you collect information on your pokedexes there is a way for you to transfer the data to me from long distances. At pokemon centers and few other places there are things called Transfer Machines. They look like that," Oak pointed to a green machine as tall as a grown person and the shape of an arcade game or ATM, there was a small keypad with numbers on it, and several buttons too, there was also a slot that was maybe as thick as half an inch.

"It delivers data from pokedexes to professors that Trainers know the number to call them with, I should also say it works like a video phone too, which reminds me," Oak found a piece of paper and tore it into four pieces and wrote something on all of them, "here, this is my number to use on those machines. After you do that you will be able to talk to me and send the info on your pokedex, to do that place it straight up and down with the light bulb on the top half in that slot as far as it will go, wait a few seconds, then I will tell you when to pull it out."

"Okay, sounds simple enough," Lucas said once he was handed his paper with the number. Oak and the assisstant walked with them out of the lab after handing all the pieces out.

"Good luck on your journeys!" Oak said as they left the lab and headed for the gates.

"Thanks!" they said in unison. They waved as the professor headed back in and turned themselves to the gate.

"Once we step pass this gate, we will have made our first step into our journey," Derek pointed out.

"Alright then, I push open the gate and on the count of three we put one foot forward, how does that sound?" Alex suggested. His friends said yes and he took a dramatic deep breath.

Alex placed his hands on the iron bars and gave a push forward, the door creaked open and Alex said gently, "One... two... three..."


	2. The first catch of the day!

Alex and his three friends extended a foot slowly and walked out of the lab's boundaries.

"So, wasn't it life changing for you guys?" Lucas said mystically.

"Very," Quinton said with sarcasm dripping off the word. They all laughed at how they were acting and stayed in a bright mood all the way to the middle of the town, which was just where there houses were, but it wasn't any busier than any other part of Pallet Town.

"Now, what are we going to catch when we head off?" Derek asked everyone.

Alex stopped in his tracks and everybody turned around. "What's the matter?" Lucas asked.

"I just realized, I'm at the disadvantage with the Pewter Gym!" he exclaimed.

"So? We all are as of now, none of our pokemon learn anything super effective to rock types until later," Derek pointed out, "Well, we don't know about Nidoran though."

"Yeah but Charmander won't learn anything good against a rock type that I know of!" he said to Derek more than anybody else.

"Well what are you going to do about it?" Quinton asked.

"I had thought about if I chose Charmander, and you know that little inlet south of here?" They all said yeah.

"Well at my house there is a fishing rod I could use to catch a water type! That way I'll be able to fight on better grounds with the gym leader!"

"And we conveniently stopped several yards away from your house," Derek said.

"Yeah, what a coincidence, thanks for talking about catching something right here Derek!" Alex thanked. Derek just gave a short laugh and Alex ran back to his house while the others waited.

"Hi mom and dad!" Alex said when he found them in the kitchen still.

"Your journey can't be over that fast, can it?" his mom teased.

"Heh heh, well, I need to ask a favor, can I borrow your fishing rod dad?" Alex asked.

"Sure, actually, you know I barely use it, so you can take it with you and share it with your friends," he told him.

"Are you sure? Because you won't get it back for a really long time."

"Of course, you'll put it to better use than I will, just don't let it break if you can help it."

"Don't worry, I'll make sure nothing happens to it, now, it's still in that closet right?"

"Yep, and remember you can push the rod in so it'll fit in your bag if you have room," he added at the end.

"Thanks, it'll really help," he said. He then moved quickly out of the kitchen and up the stairs to the closet containing the fishing rod, he passed by Teresa's room and heard noises going on, he thought she'd go right back to bed for an hour or so.

"Aha!" he said as he opened the closet door and found previously mentioned item. Shutting the door after taking it out he passed Teresa's room again and heard what sounded like a battle. She liked to pretend that she was in the Indigo League a lot and he thought probably because she couldn't go then at least she could pretend she was going.

Alex ran down the stairs but stopped by the kitchen to look into it, "Alright, this time I'm going, I'll call you when I can!"

"Bye!" both his parents said. Alex ran out the door with one final wave of goodbye and met up with his friends again.

"So, did you get your fishing rod?" Derek asked.

"Yep, now, I know this backtracks us, but we have to go the other way," Alex said, checking to see if his friends would stick with him.

"Of course, but hey, it's a long time before the Indigo League, let's see what you catch," Lucas said. Even though nobody else said anything Alex changed direction and jogged for the inlet.

Pallet Town stood by the ocean front, but it was not a large port city, in fact, barely any ships came through it at all. This was due to Pallet Town having no beaches whatsoever, it was more marshy by the water and it almost instantly becomes fields heading into town, which created murky water full of mud and all sorts of algae. However, believe it or not you could still catch some sea pokemon from the shore under all that grime. It also served as a big help to Alex today.

"Okay," Alex said while digging into his bag, "let's get started." He pulled out the rod, extended it out, fixed up the line and hook, and casted it out in an area that was a little clearer than the others.

"So what do you plan to catch?" Quinton asked.

"I don't know, I put a weight on the line so it would sink to the ground, I bet there'll be something down there to catch," Alex said. Nothing happened for a long time and everybody was getting a little impatient. Quinton checked his watch.

"It's been fifteen minutes! Why isn't anything biting!"

"Give it time, fishing is a patient game," Alex said sagelike. Quinton snorted a laugh.

A little bit more later when the sky was beginning to get cloudy the line had finally begun to pull and Alex started reeling it in with excitement.

"I've finally caught something!"

"You didn't catch it yet, you just have it on the line," Derek told him.

"Whatever, but here. It. Comes!" Alex said back as he gave one big pull on the rod and brought the mystery pokemon to light. On the end of the line was a red fish with yellow whiskers and white fins, it's eyes were round and completely blank.

"Aww, a Magikarp..." Alex groaned. You didn't have to be a trainer to know about Magikarp, and everybody knew they couldn't know anything to fight with.

"Hey, my cousin told me Magikarp evolve into something powerful, maybe you should catch that!" Derek said.

"Your cousin also sicked his Rattata on me at your eighth birthday party as a 'joke', I'm not going to trust him," Alex said coldly at the thought of that. He put the Magikarp back in the water and cast further out. Everyone groaned because the would have to wait longer.

However it wasn't much longer when the line made little, short tugs so Alex jumped on the moment.

"What if it's another Magikarp?"

"That Magikarp kept pulling, this thing is only pulling in short tugs, it has to be something different, and anything could be better than Magikarp!" Alex said through grunts, "I'm sure it is, this thing is heavier!"

Though it took a while to get it Alex managed to swing back his rod and pull up the pokemon. It landed but let go of the line and flipped upside down, or maybe not. It was a large purple shell with two eyes inside the dark contents of it's body, and a large tongue stuck out from it.

"What could that be?" Alex looked quizically at the strange pokemon. Finding this as a perfect chance to use his pokedex he whipped it out and looked it up:

_Shellder, the bivalve pokemon, Shellder appears unable to move on land however when underwater it opens and closes it's shell to pulse about the ocean._

"Shellder hunh, it's definitely not ordinary but it's bound to know some water attacks! I'm going for it!" Alex declared. He grabbed his pokeball containing Charmander and tossed it lazily right on the ground right in front of Shellder.

"Charmander!" the pokemon said upon appearing out of the pokeball.

"Alright, this is our first battle, so let's make the first move! Scratch!" Alex commanded with an impressive act as if he's done battling for ages. Charmander didn't even need to run for this attack as Shellder was at it's face so the fire type swung it's arm across the front of it. Shellder was knocked to the side several inches and turned to face another direction, but hopped to look back at Charmander and send out a powerful jet of water.

"Dodge it!" Alex reacted quickly. He completely forgot that Charmander might have an issue facing a water type attack. Luckily Charmander performed a perfect jump out of the way, and Alex's friends had to move aside to avoid getting soaked as well.

"Now go at it again with Scratch!"

"Char!" the reptile roared in it's high pitched voice. Charmander dashed on it's short feet to be greeted by another stream of water, but before being knocked back it scratched Shellder again. The water type cried out from being hit hard, it flew back some feet actually, it must have been a critical hit!

"Alright, that powerful hit is telling me it's time to go for the catch!" Alex declared. He grabbed an empty pokeball and gave a sideways throw towards Shellder. The ball bounced off the top shell and opened up, once doing so Shellder was sucked into the ball as it fell to the ground. It shook from side to side gently and Alex crossed his fingers hoping he would catch it.

The ball finally stopped shaking and it dinged, indicating he had caught the Shellder.

"Yes!" he yelled in victory, "Shellder is mine!"

"You got lucky, but congratulations on being the first of us to catch a pokemon," Quinton said.

"Do you guys want a try?" Alex asked, picking up the fishing rod and waving it.

"Nah, I've already got a water type," Derek said.

"I want to find some other types than water right now," Quinton declined.

"Thanks, but I've got a grass type, so I'm covered for now," Lucas rejected politely.

"Alright... so now that that's out of the way let's get moving to our first destination, Viridian City!" Alex said as he put away the fishing rod. He returned Charmander and picked up the Shellder's pokeball then ran up to catch up with his friends. They were looking over at something Lucas had in his hands.

"Hey guys, whatcha lookin' at?" Alex asked with each word being stretched out.

"Lucas said there's a little side route just outside of the entrance to Viridian City we're going through, a place where there are some different pokemon than Rattata and Pidgey," Derek explained.

"Awesome! That'll help our pokedexes, and you guys will probably find your first pokemon!" Alex enthusiastically said, he wasn't really as excited as he sounded, it was just a joke kind of.

"So let's keep going!" Lucas urged. Not wanting to spend any more time in Pallet Town the four ran through the main road to the open lands. They panted for a second before continuing so when they got going again they strolled through the fields at a casual pace.

"So, do you guys have any specific pokemon you'd like to have by the time we get to the Indigo League?" Lucas asked with his hands behind his head, looking up at the sky.

"Eh, I'd have a team that is well blended with types, so I could handle anything that I'd face," Derek told them.

Quinton then spoke up, "I'd probably have the same thing, though maybe more than one dragon type if I could ever get any."

Alex thought for a second, then said, "I don't know, I just want a team that is well trained and everyone would remember when _I _become champion!"

"Hey! I'm going to be champion, and you all know it!" Derek shot back jokingly, though he still wanted to try for champion.

Alex laughed, "Hahaha! We'll see, you'll have to get past me first, but anyways, what about you Lucas? What kind of a team would you have?"

Lucas looked at them, "Well, I definitely want it to have Bulbasaur's final evolution, but a Tauros too if I could find one, besides that... I guess just like you guys said, a well rounded, powerful team." Alex could detect a weird mix of emotions in the word _Tauros_, hopefulness, happiness, and, anger? Why anger? Oh well, not important right now.

"Hm, just talking about the pokemon we'll have makes me so excited about where we'll go in Kanto! I want to see different places, meet new people, just having an advanture!" Alex said anxiously. The rest of the walk was silent as the guys all thought about what Alex had just said. They all wanted to have a change of scenery, being in Pallet Town didn't really give you a lot to see.

In about one hour Viridian City pulled into view but they came not much closer to it since they were taking a little detour to the side where a rocky, dry terrain with little vegetation was.

"This is it? It doesn't look like many pokemon are here," Alex looked around as he said this.

"I'm sure this is the right place, just wait, besides, I thought you weren't going to catch a pokemon here?" Lucas raised an eyebrow.

"Well, I can still train here, can't I officer?" Alex asked innocently, with sarcasm mixed in.

"Ha! Go do what you want, but if you find anything interesting let us know," Lucas said. Alex laughed and walked off towards the south in search of... anything. Nothing seemed to be here except for dead grass and two thin and wispy trees, they looked as if a mere breeze could pull them out.

"Anything interesting, ha! Nothing could be- What's that?" Alex stopped his sentence short because a patch of tall dry grass rustled and crackled. He looked in anticipation of what creature would come out, but groaned when he found out it was just a Rattata, a small purple rat that was very common around here, nothing _interesting_.

"Well," Alex pulled out a pokeball, "This'll make good training! Go Shellder!"

Shellder appeared in a flash and flopped it's long tongue out with a squeak of it's name.

"Alright, let's see what it can do," Alex said, tapping his pokedex for Shellder's info. He found the page and found his specific Shellder knew two attacking moves, Water Gun, which was probably what it was using before, and Icicle Spear.

"What's that?" Alex asked, intrigued. "Let's see what Icicle Spear can do!"

Shellder squealed and to Alex's surprise spat out a decently sized icicle, followed by two more!

"Whoa! That's just cool!" Alex said in awe. Rattata was struck by the icicles and retaliated in anger with a Quick Attack.

"We won't let that hit, Water Gun Shellder!" Alex said. Shellder sprayed Rattata and pushed it off to a halt. The battle continued in the same fashion, attack with Icicle Spear, hold off with Water Gun and repeat. In no time Rattata was defeated.

"Awesome! I've only just started this journey and I've got a pokemon using ice attacks!" Alex remarked. He returned his pokemon and looked around for more pokemon.

It took a while, but Alex did happen to spot a Pidgey, and luckily for him it landed for a rest on one of the trees.

"It looks like a good time to train Charmander," Alex said. He threw out the pokeball of his first pokemon and didn't waste a second in giving a command.

"Charmander! Climb that tree and use Scratch!" Alex pointed a finger at the Pidgey in the top of the tree. Charmander moved to the tree then used it's claws to climb up it and run across the branch the Pidgey rested on. The wild bird was too tired to get away in time so Charmander could swipe at it and knock it off the branch. As it dropped the Pidgey gained it's balance fast and fluttered down safely to the barren land.

"Pidgey!" the angry bird screeched and flew up to Tackle Charmander. Not being able to move fast enough on the branch Charmander was hit in the gut and sent crashing into the ground. The little fire type grunted as it pushed itself back up to fight.

When it made it back to it's feet the lizard dropped it's head and blast dozens of tiny fireballs at the Pidgey.

"Whoa! What's that?" Alex jumped at the sight of the attack. He pulled out his pokedex to see what that fiery attack was:

_Ember, a basic fire attack that most fire types learn at an early level, occasionally it may leave a burn._

"Ember... I like the sound of that," Alex said to himself. As he was looking at the pokedex the Ember attack had seared Pidgey, and seeing that it was most likely to lose it gathered it's remaining strength to fly off.

Charmander was about to strike another Ember but Alex put a hand in front of it. "Don't, sure you didn't beat it yet but you did learn a new move, why don't we go check up on the others?" Charmander nodded and smiled.

They turned back and walked the very short distance to his friends when Alex saw Derek's Squirtle in combat with another blue pokemon. It looked a lot like a Nidoran, it had the same shape, but it was a light blue color and had no horn, however it still had fairly big ears.

"Hey guys, what's Derek fighting?" Alex asked the other two.

"It's a Nidoran like Quinton's, only that one is a girl," Lucas pointed at the blue creature, "and his is a boy."

"Ah, I see." Alex pointed his dex at the pokemon, it gave pretty much the same information Lucas did.

"So did you guys find anything?"

"Actually yeah, about ten seconds after you went off this bird, which I later found out was called a Spearow, circled in the air and dived at us, I think we might have been trespassing into it's territory, and I battled to catch it," Quinton said.

"As Quinton fought with the bird I went searching for something in the opposite direction you took and in a really uhealthy looking tree this pokemon was sleeping," Lucas said as he pulled out a pokeball and sent out a pokemon. It was a dusty white furred monkey-like creature that had two thin arms and legs connecting to a round body that made up entirely of it's head. On it's face were two eyes that looked angry and a round pig-like snout, no mouth was visible, and two triangular ears stood up on top of it's head.

"Mankey!" the pokemon bleated as it hopped up and down angrily.

"It was asleep, but I guess me throwing a pokeball at it during it's sleep made it angry, and the pokedex said it is quick to anger."

The Mankey leapt at Alex, seeing it as an outlet for it's fury.

"Return!" Lucas called quickly. Just as Mankey was about to land on Alex it was encased in red and sucked back into the pokeball. Alex sighed in relief and put his hand where his heart is, feeling the fast beating.

"I'm okay... just give me a second."

"Well, I'll show you my pokemon, but I'm pretty sure it won't go for your face," Quinton said while tossing a ball before Alex could say otherwise. A small brown bird appeared on the ground, it's head feathers were spiky and pointed back, and it's tucked in wings were pink.

Alex looked at it for a second, checking to see it wouldn't jump at him, then grinned, "I like this one, not only does it not want to hurt me but it does look cool, Mankey was too, but you know," he got quiet at the end of his sentence.

They turned back to watch the battle but instead saw a shaking pokeball on the dusty ground. It stopped shaking and Derek picked it up.

"Did you guys see that? I caught that Nidoran!"

"Congratulations, we didn't see the last of the battle, but we wanted to show Alex our pokemon," Quinton explained.

"Oh, well it doesn't matter, it's only one catch. Now come on! We have to get our first badge! So let's head to Viridian City!" Derek pointed to the grand city in the distance. They ran for it, with two pokemon each, all wanting to pass through and start their dreams, and within an hours time took their first steps inside the city.


	3. First Trainer Battle! And new rival?

Alex's Rise to championship

3

As the four boys walked through Viridian City they saw many buildings that you could say were interesting, but one caught their eyes and drew them to it.

"Hey! I never knew there was a gym here!" exclaimed Derek. They ran to the front doors but were stopped by two men in black suits with red Rs.

"You four shouldn't be here! This place is too tough for ya" said one of them.

"Hey! Were trainers, we have the right to challenge the gym leader. You can't do this to us" said Lucas. They only laughed at this and said this gym is for trainers who looked like they had more battling experience than a couple of greenhorns. So they pretty much verbally kicked them away in the butts.

"We could've taken on the gym leader, I think they were just afraid of our power that was obviously coming off of us" said Quinton, trying to cheer him and his friends up, but it obviously wasn't working. So they just continued their plans to go north.

Soon they arrived at the edge of Viridian City and the beginning of Viridian Forest. It was around noon so they figured if they didn't mess around they could be at the other end by six o' clock. But soon afterwards they met a trainer that wasn't exactly that nice looking.

He had this sneer on his face that didn't look at all that nice looking, and cold, dark green eyes. His hair was obviously coated in hair gel and pointed into a Mohawk, which was dyed this frosty white. He had a sleeveless leather jacket with a matching leather pants, a plain grey shirt, a pair of black boots, and a nose piercing.

"Well look here, are you four lost or something? You don't look like you should be out here" said the guy, he looked fourteen, so he was only a year older than the new trainers, but still intimidating.

"So that's the first thing you say to people you've just seen? Well it looks like you could learn to get some manners creep" said Alex, not wanting to just back down from him.

"Oh, so we have someone with a spine, those are obviously the weakest ones, so why don't I just dispose of you" said the punk/goth… dude. He then threw out a pokeball and out came a yellow mouse with red cheeks, a lightning shaped tail, and black tipped ears.

So one thing was obviously clear, this guy is crazy and quick to judge. We only met each other for what? Two minutes? And he's already attacking us.

"You guy stand back" said Alex, "This is my fight."

"Come on out Charmander!" shouted Alex as he sent out his partner.

"Pikachu! Take care of that Charmander with Thundershock!" commanded it's trainer. The pokemon then released a blast of lightning at Charmander, which was trying hard to hold its ground.

"Charmander fight back with ember", yelled Alex. Charmander let out about a dozen of small balls of fire, which made contact with Pikachu, but didn't seem to do much. This fight continued like this, no physical attacks because Alex didn't want an upfront thunderbolt and the other guy because he didn't want a swarm of embers right in front of Pikachu. But unfortunately Alex made a slip up…

Alex's next command was for Charmander to jump into the air for an aerial ember attack. "Charmander!" was what it said as he jumped up, opening his mouth for the attack. But then…

" Pikachu! Knock that down with a Quick Attack!" said the trainer. Pikachu shot right at Charmander, not giving it any chance of defending, while leaving a temporary trail of white light. The two pokemon connected in midair, and Pikachu, the one setting the momentum, knocked the wind out of Charmander.

"What! That was way unfair!" yelled Alex.

"Hey, you were the one leaving your pokemon open in midair, I just took the chance. And if you were wondering why I decided to fight you right out it's because I'm only helping weaklings like you realize that all pokemon and trainers beyond here are too powerful for you", smirked the trainer.

"Well who do you even think you are! I bet you would attack us without any pokemon", said Quinton.

"Well for the first question I am Drew, the toughest trainer you'll ever meet. And no, I wouldn't attack you without a way of defending yourself, I already told you why I brought out Pikachu. Now if you don't mind, I've got other things to do", said Drew. He and Pikachu just left then, laughing, which stung Alex the hardest.

The four decided to camp out since they did some training, and it was late after that. The whole time they were setting up camp Alex was grumbling and muttering to himself…

"Stupid Drew, thinking he's all that, with that horrible Pikachu, I wish he was here so I could get payback…" but soon Alex was stopped by Lucas.

"Hey Alex you know, it was just a battle. Don't get too obsessed with losing".

"Well I don't think it's fair, I lost my first trainer battle, and I consider that bad luck, especially since I lost to that jerk" argued Alex. So from then on they all kept quiet to themselves, but then in the middle of the night while everybody was asleep Alex went off. When he just left the camp he saw Derek ahead of him.

"Hey Derek, what are you doing?"

"Uhhhhh, Well I was going to… train my pokemon, I'm so nervous for the gym battle that I can't really sleep." This sounded suspicious but Alex was also out of the camp too so he decided not to question him.

"well im off to find Drew and kick his butt, or maybe burn it", as Alex said that he raised his eyebrow like maybe he should do that. They laughed at that but then decided to go off.

It took Alex maybe half an hour but he soon found Drew sitting by a campfire, still awake. Good, this made it easier.

"Hey Drew! I'm here for a rematch! Do you take the challenge or are you to scared?" demanded Alex.

"Sure, I'll take you on, I could knock you around again", smirked Drew.

(Wow! That's the longest chapter I've ever written! Well, maybe you can figure out what Derek was up too. And yes, I know that Drew is an overused theme for a pokemon rival but I will try to make new… unique rivals. Anyways just as a last message HAPPY HALLOWEEN!)


	4. Payback and Pewter

Alex's rise to championship 4

Alex shouted "Go Charmander!" as he threw his pokeball. The little pokemon came out spewing fire, as if to intimidate its opponent.

"I choose you Pikachu!" said Drew, (I just now realize I said a signature catchphrase and don't think I did that on purpose). The yellow mouse's cheeks were sparking when it came out and it then gave the Charmander its signature sneer.

"Use ember Charmander!" shouted Alex. The balls of fire shot from its mouth and this time they were a little bigger than before, that training from the afternoon obviously paid off. They actually got Pikachu to take a step back this time.

"Get behind the campfire and use thundershock!" commanded Drew. Alex saw this coming, so he told Charmander to jump to the side, it made it out safe, and the lightning dispersed.

"Hey Drew! Bad idea to get behind that fire" taunted Alex. He told Charmander to use its ember attack, and halfway through it went into the fire and came out twice in size, they nailed Pikachu so hard it flew back into Drew's tent. Everyone knew now the battle was over.

"No way! That battle ended too quickly! I want a rematch" pouted Drew. _Wow this guy acts all tough normally, but he's a sore loser _thought Alex.

"Well if you want a rematch, your gonna need to use another pokemon", said Alex. At this Drew just stared blankly and made a signal for him to go away. Content with payback Alex left the campsite smiling. When he returned everyone was still asleep, but Derek wasn't back, _he must really want to win that gym badge _thought Alex. It was so late that he just decided to sleep on it.

Several hours later Lucas woke up to the smell of smoke. When he woke up he saw that there was a fire around the northern part of the camp, not good.

"Guys! Wake UP!" screamed Lucas. Both Quinton and Alex soon realized what was going on, and they all started to panic.

"Where's Derek! We could really use his Squirtle right now!" yelled Lucas. Alex just told him about him going out to train, and he apparently didn't come back yet. So to take the place of Squirtle, Alex used his Shellder, which doused the flames easily with water gun.

"That was weird", said Quinton. Since they had some time to sleep and with this whole fiasco the three decided to pack up and head to Pewter City. Quinton declared that since Derek wasn't here he would just have to find his own way to the city.

When they made it to the Pewter City they were amazed at how… stony it looked. There were many tall buildings, but all of the roads were lined with big rocks, and they were all dirt roads. Since the place looked the same everywhere they asked for directions to the gym, a man said it was just west of Stone park, which was only two blocks ahead.

_Great, _thoughtAlex_ more rocks._ While walking to the gym they decided that Quinton would go first to face the leader, then Lucas, and finally Alex. Then they noticed a familiar face in the park, "Derek!" shouted Lucas, "Where have you been!".

"Well uh, to tell the truth I was in so much anticipation it was eating me alive, so I challenged the gym, but look! I got the badge", said Derek, who showed them a gray badge shaped like a rock.

"Two things Derek, one I take it the gym leader is a rock type user, and two YOU BROKE THE AGREEMENT! We agreed to go our own ways when we all got our first badge" fumed Alex. (Just to skip a bit along they all argued a bit, anger was vented, and they all went back to the gym.)

As they entered Alex first noticed two things, more rocks… and that the gym leader was intimidating. He seemed to always have a constant glare, which made him look all the more tougher to the new trainers. But finally Quinton walked up to take the challenge.

"We came here for a battle, and I'm going up first", said Quinton.

"Well then how about we get this going", said the leader. The two got to their positions on opposite ends of the field, and the ref held up the flags.

"The match between the trainer Quinton and the gym leader Brock shall begin, both competitors will use only two pokemon, and let the battle begin!" shouted the referee.

The gym leader, Brock sent out a pokemon he called Geodude, which looked like a rock with two arms, and Quinton sent out his Nidoran. Nidoran was commanded to use poison sting, which didn't do much to Geodude, which responded with a rock throw attack. The rocks hit hard, but Nidoran kept going.

"Run up to Geodude!" said Quinton. The pokemon began to bound at its opponent, jumping over rocks and other obstacles, which also included another Rock Throw. Once it made a stop at Geodude's left, it waited for its next attack.

"Use Double Kick", said Quinton, the pokemon then turned around, got on its forelegs and hit Geodude multiple times, which did a lot of damage, this knocked Geodude out.

"Geodude is unable to battle, the victory goes to Nidoran", said the ref.

"Return Geodude", said Brock, then he threw another pokeball, "Go Onix!". Out came a large rock snake pokemon, with a flat horn on the rock that looked to be the head. "Use Rock Slide!" he shouted. Onix then slammed his tail into the ground, and up came a shower of large rocks.

"Hide yourself between the two rocks in the center of the field", said Quinton. Nidoran made it just in time, a particularly big stone almost landed on it. Once the barrage was over, the two rocks Nidoran was hiding under crumbled from being hit too much, but the pokemon was okay.

(I'm gonna skip along and say that Nidoran landed a couple of hits, which eventually defeated Onix, and Brock gave him the Boulder Badge. He said that Lucas could face him tomorrow, and now Lucas and Alex are thinking of their own strategy, which Alex could really use because of his Charmander)


	5. Lockdown pt 1

It was a new day, specifically the day Lucas receives his first ever badge. Everyone was up and watching as Lucas do last minute training with his Bulbasaur and Mankey.

"If we can stay in top shape we'll win all eight badges without breaking a sweat," said Lucas as his Mankey broke another practice dummy with Low Kick.

"If you work them too hard this morning, Brock will crush them", joked Derek.

So Lucas responded, "I guess you're right, well we may as well explore this town, I heard they have some cool fossil museum, and then after checking it out we could do something without involving _rocks._" Everyone laughed at that, because it seemed like a fat chance for that to happen, everywhere they looked seemed like it dealt with rocks. They were just gonna have to look harder.

They left the Center and headed towards the museum. The closer they got, the more people they began to see, "This must be some uptown area", thought Alex. Though their wondering stopped when they saw police cars shooting along the road, with the sirens wailing.

"Something's not right," said Quinton, "We should check it out". The four of them ran up to see what was happening, but what they could only see was a crowd of people and police officers slowly surrounding the building.

"What's going on in there?" asked Derek. A man said, "These criminals, called Team Rocket, barged into the museum and started looting the place! The cops are trying to evacuate everyone out, but there are still people in there apparently". That was reason for Lucas to barge through to the museum, the only reason the others followed was to try and stop Lucas, they knew he was trying to help, but he was being headstrong right now.

"Get back here!" yelled an officer, "Don't go in there, this is police business!" But he didn't stop, he was going to stop this Team Rocket.

"Wait! Lucas! What are you doing!" exclaimed Alex. "I have some business to take care of", was Lucas' respond. He then ran into the building. The others quickly made it in.

Alex, who was in front of the three, almost ran into Lucas, who stopped in his tracks . They didn't need to ask why, the museum's silence was quick to realize, and eerie. This wasn't the normal silence in a museum, when everyone is around, instead there was no one, and there was a feeling like something bad would happen.

"Lucas what are y-" began Derek, but he was cut off by Lucas 'shush'-ing him. "Be quiet, I think someone's coming", said Lucas. He was right, some man in a black suit with a red R walked through the room, everyone was thinking the same thing, the people at the Viridian Gym. Something wasn't right with that gym.

"Where am I supposed to find those fossils when this place is a maze? If Dan wants them so bad, why didn't he go doing the field work? Why am I the one looking for them while he spends time in the security room? He will owe me big time for this", said the man, who continued to mutter on but they couldn't hear him because he moved to another room.

"Okay Lucas, you owe us an explanation", said Alex.

"You wanna know why I'm acting like this?" said Lucas, " The reason is that I have a grudge with Team Rocket." Everyone stared at him for a while, which Lucas got the message that they wanted an explanation.

"You know five years ago when my family moved into the neighborhood? It wasn't for normal circumstances, we used to live in Amber Valley, where we owned a Tauros ranch. One day these Team Rocket people came and started stealing the Tauros, they said 'it's for recreational use' or something like that. That was also in the same week I could start my journey, with a Tauros I raised since it was born. They took him, well I don't really know that, we left before I saw what happened, but I'm sure he didn't escape. I've hated Team Rocket ever since". This came over as a big shock, they never knew Lucas had such a sad past, nobody spoke for several minutes.

Finally Lucas said, "Come on, we need to get going, we can't let another crime be committed by Team Rocket. That man said they were looking for fossils, then we need to find them first. But there is also those people still in the building, let's split into two groups, me and Alex get the fossils, Derek and Quinton, you go look for the people, lets move it". The two teams split going left and right, trying not to get caught by the Rocket people. But things didn't turn out so well for them:

_Attention, Rocket Grunts, it seems there are some intruders in the building, four to be exact, they are currently in the plant fossil section and the excavation tools section. Stop them at all costs._

This announcement came from some speaker system, which made the Alex and Lucas jump.

"How did they find us?" asked Lucas. Then Alex looked around for an answer and saw a security camera.

"They saw us through the security camera", said Alex, "Remember what that Grunt said, somebody is in the security room, maybe he saw us through the monitors, if that's the case, then we better hurry". So the two ran, not caring if the footsteps echoed around. At one point in the museum, they ran into a Grunt.

"So here are two intruders, well I'll be happy to dispose of you, Go Grimer!" said the Grunt. He threw a pokeball and out came a pokemon that was a pile of purple sludge with arms and eyes.

"Lucas, you're so intent on stopping Team Rocket's plans, you go on ahead, I'll take care of him", said Alex. Lucas nodded and ran off, "Hey!" yelled the Grunt, "Get back here!". But before he could run off Alex sent out Charmander and said, "I'm your opponent here, so fight me, or are you too scared for an actual battle?".

"Fine, I'll face you, but it'll only be a waste of my time… Grimer use Sludge Bomb!" yelled the grunt. Grimer then released a barrage of black balls of sludge on Charmander, who got covered in it. "Charmander fight back with an ember attack!" shouted Alex. The pokemon sent out the fire balls and nailed Grimer in the face, just to say, crispy Grimers probably don't smell that good. "Hit it with poison gas", said the Grunt. A purple gas emanated from Grimer and began to fly at Charmander, "dodge it" shouted Alex. Charmander jumped out of the way, and was then told to strike with a scratch.

Charmander flung himself at Grimer, but got it's hand stuck in the poison types body. "Heh heh", said the Grunt, "Blast it with sludge bomb!" The attack struck hard, but because of his hand, Charmander was stuck.

"How do I get out of this?" said Alex. Then something began to happen to Charmander, he began to glow a bright white. Then it got bigger, and changed shape. Two seconds later he stopped glowing and changed in appearance. The pokemon was red, had some sort of horn on the back of it's head, and its eyes were sort of in a natural angry look. Alex checked his pokedex and saw that it was a Charmeleon, which was what Charmander evolved into.

"Wow! My first evolution in my team! And what's this? Now Charmeleon knows Metal Claw, that sounds cool. Charmeleon, use Metal Claw!" shouted Alex. Charmeleon's claws began to glow like scratch, but they became longer, and more of a silver than white glow. Charmeleon's left claw went right up the front of Grimer, and made it fall back, defeated.

"No!" screamed the grunt in dismay, "I'm out of pokemon!".

"Well then", smirked Alex, "Will you let us go through, or do we have to force through you?". At this Charmander began to form a Metal Claw, to prove Alex's point. So the Grunt said, "Go on ahead, it's not like I could stop you anyways now". So Alex returned Charmeleon and walked on.

Alex walked through some wing about an archeologist who found the largest fossil yet. Out of curiosity he went up to some audio tape about the man, but when he pressed the button, nothing happened, but as he left, he nearly jumped when the speaker system then came through the audio's mouth.

_Attention Grunts, since the intruders haven't been stopped yet, just to assure they don't save the lost museum goers or the fossils, the museum is going on lockdown until the mission is completed._

Just then Alex could see some doors have metal doors come down on walkthroughs. That included the only one in the wing, Alex was trapped!


	6. Lockdown pt 2

Quinton and Derek were not as lucky as Lucas and Alex were, facing only one Grunt, instead they had to fight through about six, which did a number on them. Nidoran was actually out of commission, thanks to several Rattata.

"This is great", said Derek sarcastically, "those two only have to look for some skeletons in a rock, and we have to find people scattered all over the place, who knows where they are? For all we know, they could be rounded up and captured by Team Rocket!".

"Well if we can just avoid these Rocket Grunts then it wouldn't be so hard to find them", said Quinton. It was just a little bit later that when they turned a corner they found a little girl in a corner, crying. They walked towards her to see what was wrong, besides being a hostage.

"Hey girl, what's wrong", said Quinton. The girl told him, "I was with my mom and a group of people, when my pokemon ran off, I went to get it back, but I couldn't find her, and when I tried to find those people I was with, they were gone", except it took a while to say this between sobs.

"Well come with us", said Derek, "We'll find them, and your pokemon". So since she didn't have anywhere else to go she went with them. Both boys though would've liked the girl to stop sniffling, they would be noticed if she kept going. But no Grunts came up, and eventually they did find the girl's pokemon.

"Jigglypuff! I found you!" said the girl. This pokemon she called Jigglypuff was a round pink ball with triangle ears, small arms and feet, big eyes, and a swirl of hair on its forehead. Personally Derek thought it was too cute for his liking. But now they were at least done with one problem. Now they had to find her mom, and then all the other people.

Their little search led them to the fossil exhibit, which was empty except for one person, "MOM! I found you!" shrieked the girl.

"Marilyn, I've been looking for you! Don't do something like that ever again!" said the mom, which the girl then explained what happened. Meanwhile Derek and Quinton were sarcastically praising Lucas and Alex for making it to the fossils, which speaking of… were gone. All of them, which means maybe they did make it here, but went to store them safely somewhere, or they did get stolen.

"Now that I think about it, why did they want to steal the fossils? They probably have some fortune of a price in the black market, but that's the only reason I can think of", said Derek.

"Who knows why? Let's just find the other people and then get back to the other two", said Quinton. Just then, a man in a lab coat walked in the exhibit and looked shocked to find people here.

"Wah! You must be the people trying to stop our plans, I won't have that happen! Go Magnemite!" said the lab coat man. From the pokeball he threw out came a pokemon that was a steel ball with one eye, a screw on the top of its head, and two magnets at the side. So for this battle Derek decided to take it.

"Wartortle! Go" shouted Derek. Out came Squirtle's evolved form.

"When did it evolve?" asked Quinton. "This happened in my battle against Brock, but that's not important right now, Wartortle use water gun!" commanded Derek. Wartortle doused Magnemite, but since it was an electric type, not much damage happened.

"Ha ha ha! That won't stop us at all! Magnemite use Thundershock", ordered the scientist. Then the pokemon blasted electricity directly at Wartortle, but Derek told it to dodge the attack, and the bolt didn't even come close. Ever since it evolved Wartortle has become much faster. Then Wartortle came back with a skull bash, it tucked it's head into it's shell, and launched at the living magnet. Even though it shouldn't have done much Magnemite was knocked out.

"How could this happen! I must have worn it out earlier making it take out the computer system", said the scientist.

"Why did you say that?" asked Derek. At that the scientist clapped a hand to his mouth, "I have said too much, uh uh," then he just made a break for it. Derek and Quinton gave chase, and since Marilyn and her mom didn't have anywhere else to go, they followed.

This man was working hard to avoid capture, he would make sudden turns, or fake turns and make the two trainers have to go back to continue the chase. Luckily he ran out of breath at a small room, so if he started to run again he wouldn't have good chances of escaping. But then the other four had to catch their breath too. Just then:

_Attention Grunts, since the intruders haven't been stopped yet, just to assure they don't save the lost museum goers or the fossils, the museum is going on lockdown until the mission is completed._

"You know, the weird thing is that actually Team Rocket is the intruders here", said Quinton. Before anything else was said a metal door dropped down, right between Quinton and Marilyn, and Derek and Marilyn's mom…


	7. Lockdown pt 3

So Alex was alone.

It's been half an hour since the doors fell, and of course Alex had to be in the most boring room, the most entertainment he had here was reading about what this old guy did over the years, which was pretty much killing him. Once he thought about stacking things over each other to go through the air vents, but then he thought he could ruin museum property, and he didn't want to pay some fine. So he was out of ideas, until.

"Hey, these doors are made of metal, and metal melts in fire, soooo, Charmeleon come on out!" yelled Alex. Out came the red pokemon, looking ready for action.

"Charmeleon, I need you to melt those doors with an ember attack", said Alex. So Charmeleon released his attack, but the door only turned a hot orange then quickly cooled down. Confused, Alex tried it again, but it failed again. So he tried it three more times, hoping a constant barrage would weaken the door. But nothing worked out.

"Well if I used Shellder to hit the door with a water attack, it could rust, but that would be WAY too slow. But… if I use a fire attack, then a water move, the door might break!" exclaimed Alex. Confident with his epiphany, Alex sent out Shellder to help. So now he had Charmeleon use ember, then Shellder strike with a water gun. But even then the doors would not be defeated, metaphorically, so Alex had to come up with **another** idea.

It was maybe five minutes until his new plan came around, "Charmeleon, you use ember, Shellder, use water gun and then while the door is taking the shock come in with a metal claw Charmeleon," said Alex. So they tried this plan, the embers turned the door real hot, and the water gun gave it a quick cool down, and finally, Charmeleon's left hand claws extended and glowed. The pokemon struck with a quick speed, and brought down that door in many pieces.

"We can get out! Charmeleon, Shellder, return," said Alex. After being sucked back into their pokeballs, Alex headed out to find the fossils, but when he made it to the fossil room, he was disappointed in finding out they were already taken! Either Lucas made it to them or they were stolen, but Alex was more thinking of the worst of the two possible outcomes. But he will not give up! Alex ran on to the back of the museum, where he hoped to find the security room. This museum couldn't be super huge, so it wouldn't take him long to find it.

Well Alex found something alright, trouble. Four Rocket Grunts had been chatting with each other when one saw Alex, they all turned and were sending out their pokemon. What Alex's next challenge was one pokemon that was a purple snake, a Grimer, and two large brown-orange rat pokemon. His pokedex told him the snake was an Ekans, and the two rats were Raticate.

"Well this could have gone better," said Alex, "Well if it has to come down to this, then Shellder let's go!" Out came the purple shell pokemon, saying its name once the glow stopped. Shellder was commanded to use water gun at the Grimer, which it did. The attack made the poison type fly back, but then the Ekans launched itself and used Wrap on Shellder. Shellder was trying to break free, but there was no luck for the poor pokemon.

Then a Grunt shouted, "Raticate use Bite!" and the normal type raced to Shellder. At the last second Raticate did a small jump and bared its teeth, upon flying down Shellder sunk into the coil Ekans made, and Raticate bit Ekans.

Ekans hissed from the being hurt badly, and attacked Raticate with a poison sting.

"Now Shellder!" shouted Alex, "While those two are fighting launch yourself at them with Water Gun!". So Shellder turned around and blasted the ground in front of it, making it a living missile, and struck the two enemies into Grimer and the other Raticate. The Ekans fainted and Grimer was a little weak, but the Raticate were still going.

The Grunts that had the Raticates commanded them to use Quick Attack, and the two pokemon charged. They ran at speeds that Shellder couldn't protect itself from. Shellder then flew back and crash landed into an artifact stand.

"Shellder use Bubblebeam at the two Raticate", Alex shouted. A spray of bubbles covered the two opponents, and once the attack ended, one of the two was out. This left one Raticate and a Grimer, easy enough.

"Shellder, attack with water gun while spinning!" Alex shouted. He was hoping to use this tactic to hit both targets with one attack. Shellder balanced on one of its bottom stub-spine things, and began to spin, spewing water all around. Alex and the Grunts even got soaked, but what really mattered is that Raticate and Grimer fainted. Unfortunately these Grunts were not just going to let Alex walk through, they lunged at Alex, but he still had his Shellder out so he blasted them away. Alex returned his pokemon and ran off, knowing they would get up soon and chase him.

He did eventually find the security room, soon he realized the museum wasn't as big as he thought it was, the rooms just looked the same if you weren't paying attention to details, which made him a little embarrassed. The door into the room was locked, but Alex just had Charmeleon use Metal Claw to cut the hinges, and the door fell, hard, so Alex thought they might know he's coming. As he walked into the room, he saw that it was bigger than expected, as it was more like three rooms. The one he entered into must have been the main one because it was the biggest, then to his left there were people tied up, they were the museum workers and the visitors. To his right there were all these fossils, so he made it in time, and in the room he was in were two grunts, a scientist looking person, and a man that looked to be the one in charge.

"What do we have here?" said the scientist, "A young trainer who got lost? Well we can just have you tied up with the others." The scientist laughed after this, which wasn't that funny, so Alex guessed by the look on the other Rocket's faces he was full of himself. Before Alex could make a move he fell down, and he got up to see Lucas ran into him.

"Hey Lucas, could you have gotten here any faster?" joked Alex.

"Ha ha, now come on, we have to get those people free and take back the fossils," said Lucas.

"Yeah, could you please, Alex?" said Derek. Alex and Lucas just realized Derek and Quinton were tied up right by the door way, they just didn't have time to say anything.

"Well now that everyone's here, can we just get over with this?" said the boss, annoyed.

"Yes Nick alright" said the scientist.

Then with a snicker the scientist pulled out a remote and said in an announcer's voice, "Ladies and Gentlemen! I present to you the one, the only, robot trainer! He is all metal and wires, all evil, and definitely 100% Team Rocket genius!" And this guy is definitely 100% insane.

He pressed the button and down came a large piece of metal. Well, that's what it looked like at first, but then they saw that it had two large feet that split at the end into something like two flat toes. Then there was long flat iron boards that acted like legs, a body that was a square with rounded corners, and two large cylinders, one on two sides of the square, so they acted like arms. Just so that wouldn't seem like too much of an improper sentence I will finish with saying that one 'arm' had a hole in the middle of its end, and the other 'arm' had something that looked like a scope at the same spot the hole was at, and finally, the side of the square facing us had this large circular lens, like a camera, that probably acted as the eye.

"See it in all of its glory, as it stops you runts once and for all!" shouted the scientist. He pressed another button and then a voice came from the robot, _Auto-pilot mode engaged._ To Alex it sounded more like the scientist than a robot. The arm with the hole tilted up a bit and a pokeball came through it half way. So it was going to launch it at us and battle, well Alex and Lucas were ready, and they should be!


	8. Lockdown pt 4

Lucas was beginning to lose himself, his anger over what Team Rocket did to him was making him frustrated, and he couldn't think straight. He just ran, looking for the fossils while taking down any Rocket Grunt that was in his way. When the doors started coming down, it only added more rage to Lucas' great blaze of fury. The doors became an annoying obstacle; every move Bulbasaur knew could not break the metal.

That is, only what **Bulbasaur** knew.

"Why won't you break you stupid door!" yelled Lucas, after what literally could have been his twentieth attempt of busting the door. This seemed to have allowed Lucas to vent some of his steam out of his system, as he saw how tired Bulbasaur was and felt sorry for using it so much.

"Saur… saur…" panted the pokemon over and over again.

"Sorry Bulbasaur, return, you deserve a break", said Lucas as he returned the pokemon to its pokeball, "Let's try Mankey!"

"Mankey!" screeched the pig-monkey pokemon as it came out in a white flash, jumping up and down with its pent up energy. Now that he thought about it, a fighting type attack like Low Kick could probably bust the door a lot easier and faster than a grass type attack like Razor Leaf.

"Okay now, Mankey I want you to use Low Kick on that door", Lucas told his pokemon.

Mankey made a funny dive across the floor like a baseball player sliding into home plate. As it made connection to the door there was a loud 'Bang!' noise but nothing to show. Although after the second try the door began deforming, eventually to the point where it broke off.

Unfortunately all that banging caught the attention of a Rocket Grunt.

"Hah! I thought Drake got trapped when the doors closed down but what do I see? A weak child busting through a door with his Mankey! This is probably the most interesting day I have ever had! Now I also have the chance to test out this bad boy, go Grimer!" said the grunt.

So to Lucas it looks like this guy is either is a little loose in the head or has an over active sense of humor, but what the heck? He gets a chance to kick Rocket butt, there's nothing wrong with that.

"Okay so you want to battle? That is fine with me, Mankey use Low Kick!" commanded Lucas. Mankey made a dive for the pile of purple sludge that was Grimer. But to Lucas' dismay Mankey's foot only sunk into Grimer's body. It was then swatted away with Grimer's arm, leaving Mankey in a small puddle of purple sludge. And speaking of sludge…

"Grimer use your Sludge attack!" yelled the grunt. Out came the dark balls of toxic waste, pelting Mankey like a fully automatic gun. Luckily the fighting type didn't go down, but it did take a serious beating.

The poor pokemon got up slowly, grunting when it got to it's feet.

"Are you okay Mankey?" asked Lucas, after seeing it give a thumbs up that it picked up, he just smiled and it was full steam ahead.

"Rage!" shouted Lucas. Mankey developed a small tint of red energy around it and its eyes formed an angry look, and it went forward to hit Grimer in the face. To which it replied to that attack with a Sludge Bomb. One big ball of brownish-green poisons firing right on the tiny pokemon. But because when a pokemon using Rage is hit its power increases Lucas smiled when Grimer fell back from a second Rage attack. Which by the way Mankey's red energy turned a little darker, indicating the extra power added on to the attack.

To the grunt's astonishment, Grimer was beginning to look a little tired, a sign Lucas' strategy with Rage was working. The Grunt though was not going to give up so easily.

"Grimer, finish it off with a Sludge attack!" commanded the Grunt.

Now Lucas saw a problem, although Rage seemed to be hurting Grimer, Mankey was still hurt pretty bad, and this attack could finish it off, if not the next will. Then on the other hand, if he wanted to finish off Grimer, he needed Mankey to take damage to make Rage more powerful. He was in a problem, as Bulbasaur was a little tired still, and even then it had an even bigger disadvantage to the poison type than Mankey. Lucas also had to find a quick solution, as the attack just started. Thankfully, he did.

If Mankey could slide under the barrage made by Sludge, it would take less damage while still being able to fight and have Rage become more powerful. It was a bit of a risk, as Grimer could lower its aim, but Lucas did not think so as it seemed the attack in a way locked it into a still position. It was his only shot…

"Mankey, slide under Sludge while using Rage!" shouted Lucas with a tone of confidence. Mankey ran forward, then bent down and lunged with a fist ready to nail Grimer. Although taking a few hits the Rage energy began to darken and you couldn't even see Mankey's body anymore.

In the last seconds Grimer's attack ended and the next thing you know it was actually picked up and tossed by Mankey's attack.

That was it, Grimer was out, and the Grunt could only stand there with his jaw dropped. But Lucas finally broke the silence.

"Now you are going to let me pass with no problems, or you can talk to my friend", said Lucas, pointing at Mankey who still had the red aura around it.

After another second of silence, the Grunt spoke, "Okay, go on, I know I need to stop you, but I just have to respect that power. It's not like you will actually stop us anyways, especially with our little surprise". Though Lucas did not here that last part because it was said more in a whispered voice. So Lucas continued on his way, now remembering once again his mission was to save the fossils.

Upon finding the fossil exhibit he saw that the metal doors came down here, but the only difference was that this metal door was like the ones to a jail cell, with bars. He could not afford for Mankey to waste any more energy because it might faint in doing so, but it wouldn't matter, from looking through the bars Lucas could see the exhibit was empty. All the stands holding nothing, and one centerpiece glass case with nothing to present. Disappointed he didn't make it in time, Lucas ran off in search of the fossils, hoping he still had time.

After running through another room, Lucas ended up finding himself caught by two Grunts. They tried holding him down, but after struggling and a backwards kick to their shins, Lucas ran off, not wanting to waste time battling.

Not long after the Grunts gave chase, recovering from being kicked. Anyways they did not play fair and ended up sending out one Grimer each, and in doing so they commanded them to attack with a Sludge Bomb attack. The attack struck Lucas in the back, causing severe pain.

"AAAGGHHH!" screamed in pain Lucas, "Okay, you want to play rough? I'll give you rough. Bulbasaur, come on out and use Razor Leaf!" Out came the grass type in a bright flash, with a battle ready look on its face. Once on the ground, Bulbasaur unleashed with all of its might a flurry of leaves, which made the Grunts fall back, but because the Grimers were blobs of slime, the Razor Leaf attack did not do that much damage. In other words they could still fight, and they could without a command.

Instead of a Sludge Bomb attack, the two Grimers used Poison Gas, and the light purple fumes came streaming forward at Bulbasaur, leaving no space to avoid the attack. To Lucas there was no shame in running away right now so well, that was his plan.

"Bulbasaur return!" yelled Lucas, and off he ran, looking back once in a while in case there was a Sludge Bomb attack coming his way. Although he shouldn't have done this because in doing so he ran into a glass case, and knocked it down. Yet Lucas could not stop now, he had to escape the Grunts and their Grimers. Looking around he saw that he ran around back to the room he was trapped in when the doors came down. That was not a room to go into as the only other door in there was still blocked, and that left him to go right.

Taking the right, Lucas entered the food court, which to him seemed like the perfect place to hide and rest. He chose a mini pretzel store to hide in, then jumped over the counter, and finally ducked down.

"Huh… huh… how do I find the head of this operation? If I find him, I bet they'll leave, or I could find a way to end it all, end their evil, and get back at them for taking away my Tauros, my family's ranch, my hom-", but Lucas could not finish the word home, because his home was in Pallet Town. That is where he could actually see his neighbors on a daily basis, where he met his friends, where he got his first pokemon. That is his real home, and he couldn't go back on that.

After recovering from that awkward moment of sadness Lucas got up and looked around for a way to find the person in charge of this group of Grunts, or at least find his friends. But little did Lucas know that the Grunts were in the room when he got up, to his dismay they saw him, and snickered because they had him trapped. While sending out the two Grimer Lucas sighed at the point that he had to fight because it was the only way out of here.

"Bulbasaur knock out these two!" shouted Lucas as he sent out his pokemon. Bulbasaur again showed his warriors face and started snarling at his opponents.

"Use Razor Leaf!" commanded Lucas. Out came the flurry of leaves, and both Grimers seemed to have taken a critical blow, and they were beginning to show signs of tiredness. This did not stop the Grunts though, as they commanded one of the Grimers to use Poison Gas while the other had to use Sludge.

The ball of toxic waste came hurling through the air with the fumes not that far behind, leaving Bulbasaur to be pulverized.

Looking around Lucas made a plan using the field around him.

"Bulbasaur, use Vine Whip to grab a chair and throw it at the Sludge attack!" yelled Lucas. Thankfully Bulbasaur was able to lift a chair by a table nearby and launch it at the wad of slime. Once reaching contact, the chair was smashed apart, but luckily it took all of the power in Sludge to do so, which in other words means chair + Sludge = Cancelled attack (Don't judge how poorly put together that sentence was). That just left the Poison Gas.

"Now Bulbasaur I want you to use your Vine Whip to jump onto a table!" said Lucas. Not wanting to get hit by the gas Bulbasaur put its vines on the ground and with some effort leaped on the table to its right. Now the Poison Gas would flow harmlessly around the bottom of the ground, not being able to rise and poison Bulbasaur. That didn't mean he was in the clear yet though, Lucas noticed how it took a little bit of an extra boost to get Bulbasaur on the table so it meant Bulbasaur couldn't fight for much longer. He had to end this quick.

_Oh boy, now what do I do? I don't want to use Vine Whip or Razor Leaf because it won't do much damage, and Tackle will leave Bulbasaur way to close to the enemy than I would like… Wait a minute! I'll use the chairs again! _thought Lucas.

"Okay Bulbasaur, utilize what strength you have and use Vine Whip to throw a chair at their faces!" said Lucas. He hoped to have it sound not as… dark humored but he couldn't help it, he had to do this. Anyways Bulbasaur grabbed another chair and launched it at both Grimers. The Grimers nor the Grunts were expecting such a strange command, so they did not know how to react to that, or how to react in time. The chair just went straight at them and actually made them fall back on the Grunts. The force of the impact knocked out all four of them.

"Well that's good to have over, anyways Bulbasaur I think you deserve this potion," said Lucas, pulling out a bottle shaped like the ones used for window cleaning that had a white cap and a purple body. He sprayed it on Bulbasaur and let the medicine do its thing, afterwards returning Bulbasaur to its pokeball.

"Now how do I find the one pulling the strings here?" questioned Lucas, "If they are able to know about our location and be able to lower the doors, then someone has to be in a room with different controls, hmm, what kind of room would that be?" Then after looking around, he saw a small stand full of pamphlets, _Bingo_ he thought. Taking one from the stand, he unfolded the pamphlet and saw a map of the museum, then noticed the security room. Tracing his finger from the food court to the security room, he could see walking there would take him through almost ten rooms, and no doubt there would be plenty of Grunts there to attack him, and he needed his pokemon in the best condition they could be in to face the man or woman in charge of the operation. Taking another look around the room, Lucas noticed the air ducts, or his way around the Grunts.

Although he knew the owner of the museum would not like someone doing this, Lucas stacked any object he could find on top of each other to reach an opening in the vents.

The vents were not comfortable, as Lucas had to army crawl through them instead of just crawling on hands and knees, but it would have to do. Soon he also realized that he could not tell what room he was in, and he couldn't check the pamphlet because it was too dark to read, so he would have to move around the vents blindly.

Later while still in the vents, Lucas heard some banging noise behind him. He thought at first it was just some air conditioner going on, but there was no air current moving, so it had to be something else. Then another bang occurred, and this time it was much closer, so he began to move a little faster. Finally another bang hit the vents right beneath Lucas, so he was knocked on his side.

_What was that?_ He thought. Looking through another opening Lucas saw a Rocket Grunt and something blue down below, but he could not see what the blue thing was yet. Just then, Lucas was hit again and the opening's hinges busted off, and Lucas fell right through.

"How did you-", began Lucas, but he didn't finish the sentence because he realized that he must have been pretty loud in the vents. It was basically a metal echo chamber, so this Grunt just had to follow the noise, and with his pokemon he hit the vents to make him fall out. Speaking of his pokemon, it was a bit different from the ones Lucas has seen the Grunts use before.

This pokemon was a blue color, it had no eyes, featherless wings, ears that had a violet color to it, a small mouth with small fangs, and where the legs should have been was two thin, unnamable body parts. Checking his pokedex, Lucas saw that it was called Zubat, and like the other pokemon used by Team Rocket it was a poison type, but it was also part flying.

"So are you going to stand there and gawk at me or are you going to fight?" asked the Grunt. By now Lucas had lost all that frustration over Team Rocket due to pondering over it for so much, so he just took the challenge with a smile that someone could say was full of overconfidence. Reaching into his bag, Lucas grabbed the pokeball with Mankey and pulled his arm back, then thrust the pokeball forward. The energetic pokemon came out hopping and ready for combat, which it was about to get.

"Mankey use Rage at Zubat!" shouted Lucas. The little pig-monkey lunged at Zubat with a faint pink aura surrounding it, only to get darker, showing the forced anger on Zubat. Zubat took the hit, not looking that badly damaged, then fought back with a Wing Attack. The aerial enemy looped backwards then bombarded Mankey with glowing white wings, striking it down hard due to the type advantage.

"Ooh," said Lucas after seeing the damage, "Okay, Mankey take this Rage attack slowly but make sure you nail Zubat."

"Mank," said the fighting type, thanking Lucas for not forcing Mankey to fight hard, then jumping to punch Zubat. At least getting hit with hard attacks made Rage more powerful, so if Lucas can time things right and sparingly use Mankey's energy, he might be able to pull off a victory. Anyways Mankey clipped its opponent's wing, not necessarily hitting Zubat but at least hurting it some. Yet Zubat wasn't quite ready to lose.

Zubat came right back into focus and faced Mankey. The Rocket Grunt commanded it to strike with an attack called Leech Life, Lucas did not know what that attack was but he didn't need to find out.

"Mankey get away! Wait till the attack is over!" yelled Lucas. Mankey did a couple back-flips to get to a farther distance from Zubat, but it was probably showing off too.

"Zubat!" screeched the poison type, setting its head back and then launching out a single needle at Mankey. The needle struck Mankey, than it began to take in glowing pale green orbs of light from the fighting type, which must have been Mankey's energy. The needle then detached itself and went back to Zubat, and when it went into Zubat, it gave the stolen health to it. Luckily it didn't look like the attack did much damage, so Mankey could still fight.

"Try to finish off Zubat with Rage!" commanded Lucas. Lucas' pokemon leaped into the air and grabbed Zubat by its left wing, and brought it down into the ground. Mankey jumped back to reveal a defeated Zubat, bruises all over its body.

"Return," said the Grunt. The red beam from the pokeball sucked Zubat into it, and then was put away into the Grunt's pocket.

"Alright kid, you might have defeated my pokemon, but I'll still take you down!" the Grunt said in an aggressive way.

"We'll see about that! Mankey use Low Kick on the Grunt!" said Lucas. The red energy disappeared from Mankey as it dove down at the Grunt, the kick landed square in the gut, as well as bringing the Grunt down. Making sure he stayed down, Lucas returned his pokemon and ran on to find the security room, which happened to be just ahead of him. Looking back to make sure no Grunt would stop him, Lucas ran into someone. He turned to see Alex knocked on the ground and getting back up.

"Hey Lucas, could you have got here any faster?" said Alex.

"Ha ha, now come on, we have to get these people free and take back the fossils," Lucas said back to Alex.

Just then someone spoke up, "Yeah, could you please, Alex?" Lucas turned to see Derek and Quinton tied up and on the floor by the entrance to the room.

"Well now that everyone is here, can we just get over with this?" asked some Team Rocket member.

"Yes Nick, alright," said some man in a lab coat. After hearing that name Lucas opened his eyes wide with shock when he realized who Nick was. He then turned his attention back to the scientist as he began to laugh and pull out a remote control.

"Attention ladies and gentlemen! I present to you the one, the only, robot trainer! He is all metal and wires, all evil, and definitely 100% Team Rocket genius!" said the scientist while sounding like an announcer. Pressing a large green button, down came a large robot


	9. Lockdown pt 5

"Mom!" screamed Marilyn. The metal doors had come down and separated the group of four into two groups of two, and there was no way they could get back together. Tears rolled down Marilyn's face as she pounded at the wall dividing her from her mom, Jigglypuff tried to comfort her but it didn't seem to do much help.

"We have to get back with them!" said Marilyn.

"I know, but right now we can't because there's no way that leads back to that room from here. Now come on, we have to do something than just sitting around here," commanded Quinton. The little girl nodded, then stood up and wiped her face. Without saying anything they walked through the rooms to find one place where the metal doors were in shattered pieces.

"Whoa, what happened here?" Quinton wondered.

"I don't know, but someone's been here, and it looks like they got mad with the door," thought Marilyn.

"Well it doesn't matter, it's one more obstacle down," said Quinton, but when they entered the room and found it was sealed off except for the one entrance, his mind was changed, "Never mind."

"Hey! What are you two doing?" shouted a voice, and by now Quinton knew this voice had to be from a Rocket Grunt.

"Okay, let's make this quick, Spearow I choose you!" Quinton yelled. His little brown flying type came out looking not that fierce, as it was pretty tired from constant battling, but none the less it was going to stay loyal to it's trainer and fight.

"Go Koffing!" yelled the Grunt. From his pokeball came a floating purple ball with a small smiling face with craters, and from the craters came puffs of smog every once in a while.

"Spearow use Peck!" commanded Quinton. Spearow took flight and craned it's neck to jab Koffing from below but with a command from it's trainer the Koffing carelessly moved to the side.

"It's our turn now, Koffing use Smog!" called out the Grunt. Koffing inflated at least twice it's size then immediately shrunk as it released a black gas into the room, there was little space for Spearow to dodge the attack but fortunately it made it's way into a corner of the room. Then after the Smog cleared Spearow was commanded to strike back with another Peck, this time hitting Koffing. The only drawback to this was that now Spearow was at point blank range.

"Koffing use Explosion!" the Grunt said in a way as if he would win the Indigo League with this move. Koffing expanded again but this time it was glowing and eventually in one big bang intense heat filled the room.

Quinton shielded his eyes with his arm as the explosion happened and was afraid of what would happen to Spearow. Once the explosion stopped they waited for the smoke to clear to see Spearow on the ground, smoking from the attack. Looking ahead he saw that Koffing was out too, and he was confused.

"Wha... what was that?"

"Don't you know? Explosion is a move that causes the user to faint, but in doing so it releases a large amount of powerful energy that is most likely to finish off the opponent as well."

"Oh," Quinton said quietly, "Return Spearow."

"So, ready for round two?" mocked the Grunt, holding up another pokeball.

"I'm out, but..." Quinton trailed off, turning to Marilyn, "you have a Pokemon."

"No!" she exclaimed, "I'm not going to let Jigglypuff get hurt in an explosion."

"Come on, all of my Pokemon have been defeated and you still have that one with you, and if you don't fight we'll be taken prisoner."

"Oh, oh all right, stand back, and Jigglypuff, get up to face that bad man," said Marilyn strongly. Jigglypuff jumped it's way in front of Marilyn, and now it was beginning to show a pouting kind of face.

"Go Zubat!" said the Grunt. Out came a faceless blue bat that was looking(?) nastily at Jigglypuff. With a command from the Grunt Zubat used Leech Life to suck out energy from Jigglypuff.

"Oh no you don't, Jigglypuff get into the air to avoid the attack!" shouted Marilyn. The puff ball expanded like Koffing and to Quinton's surprise floated into the air, now playing on the same terms as Zubat.

"Jigglypuff use Ice Beam!" Jigglypuff formed a small light blue ball at it's mouth and then released multiple streaks of the same color from it. The attack clipped Zubat in the wing and caused it to fall down with a large casing of ice on it's wing to keep it from flying.

"Now drop from above and use Rollout!" The Pokemon let out the air and fell back down, but while still airborne it began to spin fast and when it reached down to the ground it was like a bullet when it struck Zubat.

"Aagh! Zubat return!" shrieked the Grunt, hm, not so tough when losing.

"Now let us go, or I'll make her make Jigglypuff make you get out of our way," Quinton said, trying to be the funny person.

"... Just... don't ever do that again to me... go on," muttered the Grunt, pointing towards a random direction.

"Wait one second, now that we actually are alone and have a Grunt cornered, I'd like to know something," began Quinton, slowly pacing back and forth, "Where is the one in charge of this operation?"

"What... what do you mean?" hesitated the Grunt.

"I want to know where to find the person who is operating everything so we can stop them."

"Like I would tell you that, now if you don't mind, I have to go," said the Grunt, beginning to stroll away.

"Jigglypuff stop him!" Jigglypuff froze the Grunt's feet with Ice Beam and crossed it's arms, threatening to freeze more than just his legs.

"Okay... I'll talk," the Grunt stuttered out, "from here you'll have to take two lefts and two rights. Not that far right? Just let me go."

"Alright then, now let's go, after we stop them we can use the cameras to find your mom."

"Okay then, I guess we should go," said Marilyn. They ran off and followed the directions to where the Grunt said the commander would be. He was telling the truth about that, he was too nervous to quickly come up with a lie, however he was quick enough to make a trap at where they were heading.

The Grunt pulled out a walkie-talkie and clicked the button, "Commander, there are two brats heading towards you, be prepared to catch them."

_*kkkkkk * Got that, good, now stay on the lookout for more intruders. _

"Roger."

The Grunt turned off his walkie-talkie and laughed at the thought of what the two were about to run into.

Marilyn and Quinton had one more turn to make and head down a long hallway when they ran into Derek and Marilyn's mom.

"Mommy!" cried the little girl. She ran up to her mom and hugged her, glad to be reunited.

"How did you get here?" asked Quinton.

"I'll explain later.. or never, let's just get done with this," said Derek.

They all ran down the hall into the room where they would find the person in charge, a.k.a the security room.

"All right... where is everybody? That guy must have lied to us. Dangit!" yelled Quinton. Just then arms came from behind them and covered their mouths and grabbed their arms. Pretty soon they were tied up and Marilyn and her mom were put into another room while the two guys stayed in the main room.

"You won't get away with this you know," Marilyn's mom yelled as she was hauled into the other room where other captives were held.

"Oh don't be so negative," said an old man in a lab coat, "of course we'll get away. We have this all planned out, now that we have taken the fossils we needed for future classified plans, all we have to do now is wait for the retrieval helicopters to get us out of here, by the time the police actually have a plan to catch us we'll be happily on our way to where we need to be. Now be a good lady and be quiet, I'm busy." The old man then turned his back to them and looked at the monitors, grumbling something about where the other intruders could be.

Not long after being tied up the door that earlier locked came down and Alex charged in, which startled the elderly scientist, but he quickly got over it.

"What do we have here? A young trainer who got lost? Well we can just have you tied up with the others," snickered the scientist. Alex looked like he was about to say something but was knocked down because Lucas had run into his back.

"Hey Lucas could you have gotten here any faster?" Alex said.

"Ha ha, now come on, we have to get these people free and take back the fossils," Lucas seriously said, obviously not in the mood for jokes.

"Yeah, could you please Alex?" Derek said from behind Quinton. The two trainers untied looked down to see the others tied by the door, but looked back to face the Rocket members by the security screens.

"Well now that everyone's here, can we just get over with this?" the apparent boss said, looking annoyed.

"Yes Nick alright," the scientist said. What happened next Quinton didn't pay much attention to because he was thinking of a way to get untied. He did see that the scientist pulled out a remote, said some things, and down came a large robot. When that came down you'd think he'd pay more attention but it's not like it mattered that much now, he'll let the others deal with the robot. He looked back at his friends to see Alex and Lucas reach for their pokeballs and hesitate, either sizing up their opponent or staring in fear, they obviously knew they were fighting someone tougher than a gym leader.

_And the first meet with Team Rocket continues... I bet some people reading this are probably annoyed with seeing the same part of the story in four different point of views, and believe me so am I! I wanted to do this because I thought it would put a new element into the story but it got old since I haven't worked on this story in a while. Never the less I will finish it with Derek's side, but I will not focus so much about the conversation in the security room, and after that some real fun begins!_

_ … God I'm glad to almost have this done … _


	10. Lockdown pt 6

Derek had to jump back as the doors came down or else he would have been crushed. He was not expecting to have this kind of problem, he didn't even want to be in here, he just wanted to have Lucas and Alex take their gym battles but no, they had to be the heroes and stop Team Rocket.

"Great, now what do we do?" asked Derek.

"Well first of all, I think we should get back with my daughter and your friend, the more people we have means more Pokemon, and with more Pokemon comes less chances of being captured," Marilyn's mom told Derek.

"That sounds alright, I just want to get this over with."

"Believe me so do I."

They took a right since that way wasn't blocked off and came to face the backs of two Grunts talking to each other, either on a break or slacking off.

"Okay, now to avoid a fight let's just tip-toe around to the right, we might be able to walk around this room and get to the other two," whispered Derek. The woman only nodded and they silently walked to the right, occasionally using displays as cover to hide them. Once out to the other room they ran around three halls to get to the room where the others were, but the door was blocked, and the other two probably found another way out anyways.

"Well if this doesn't work then maybe we should just stop Team Rocket, lift the doors, and find them," suggested Derek.

"That is fine with me, we should probably use this map though to help... eh-heh, sorry I didn't think of using this before but, my mind is just very foggy from all that has happened," the woman said, pulling a museum pamphlet from her purse. Derek gave a small, are you kidding me, look but decided to just let it pass. They didn't know really where the person in charge was but they figured they should head to the food court because that was a big room and that would make sense for a base of operations.

Following the map they made it to the food court in no time but that was only because they sprinted from the same two Grunts they earlier passed.

"Hey you two! Get back here!" shouted one of them. Turning around the woman grabbed a pokeball from her purse and sent out a Pokemon. This one was pink like the Jigglypuff but it had brown triangle ears, a swirly tail, legs and arms that had fingers and toes, and finally, like Jigglypuff, had a swirl in between it's ears and above it's face.

"Clefairy use Metronome!" commanded the woman.

"Clef, Clefairy," the Pokemon said, holding up it's arms. Clefairy then began to wave it's arms side to side while pointing up towards the ceiling, then it stopped and released a giant blast of electricity, it used Thunder. The Grunts were shocked and knocked back onto their, well, backs.

"Ugh, that hurts," muttered the shorter Grunt.

"Return Clefairy," the woman said, she sucked up Clefairy back into it's ball and they ran to the door on the other side of the room.

"Oh no! Their heading to the security room! They're gonna try to stop our boss!" cried out one of the Grunts.

Derek turned around, "We weren't going to, but now that you mention it, we're gonna head over there!" Smiling at seeing they gave away that valuable piece of information he turned and headed towards the security room.

The two ran through the back of the museum and nearly ran into Quinton and Marilyn.

The girl ran towards her mom while Quinton walked up to Derek.

"How did you get here?" he asked.

"I'll explain later.. or never, let's just get done with this," he replied. They made their way to the entrance to the room and looked for any signs of Rocket members but were grabbed from behind. They were then tied up and placed by the door, except for Marilyn and her mom.

The mother was shouting something as she was carried into another room but this scientist started rambling about his plan and saying they couldn't stop them.

The door was shut by someone they couldn't see in the dark but not long after wards it fell off it's hinges and fell to the floor. Turning around Derek saw Alex walk in and be mocked by the scientist. Alex was about to move when Lucas came from behind and knocked Alex to the floor.

"Hey Lucas, could you have gotten here any faster?" Alex rhetorically said.

"Ha ha, now come on, we have to get these people free and take back the fossils," Lucas snapped back.

This wasn't the time to be joking but Derek needed to say this and he wanted them to know that he was here too so he said, "Yeah, could you please Alex?"

Alex looked down but his focus went back to the scientist at front with another man in a more decorated Rocket uniform. He wanted to 'get this show on the road' as you could put it, so the scientist grabbed a remote in his pocket and pressed a button. From the ceiling, which must have been pretty high up, came a large square robot. He noticed something about it's arms as one had a hole and the other had a scope, Derek wasn't sure what they were for but he knew scopes were for aiming so things probably weren't going to be good...

_Yes! OH MY GOD I'M DONE WITH THE SPLIT STORY! I've finished the four different parts and now the next chapter we will finally see the battle begin!_


	11. A historical battle!

Alex gripped the pokeball that held Charmeleon, it was weak, but at least it could use fire attacks to hopefully melt the towering machine they faced.

"Get ready for this," snickered the scientist. The lens on the face of the robot glowed a red-orange and the pokeball that was in the right arm launched from it and on to the floor. After bouncing back into the air the ball sent out in a white flash a small brown Pokemon, well, on the back. It had a rusty colored shell, six small, yellow insect-like arms, a dark front with glowing red eyes.

"Kabuto," the mysterious creature said.

"What is that?" Alex asked as he held up his pokedex.

_Kabuto, a Water and Rock Type, Kabuto lived thousands of years ago as prehistoric Pokemon that were mysteriously wiped out, but now they can be revived. This Pokemon are cave dwellers that like to fight in the dark where it has the advantage._

"How can it be alive? I didn't see any fossil reviving machine in here or anything like that, I think," Alex said.

"Seeing as you are not smart enough to see it, I'll explain," the scientist said, smiling, "this robotic trainer is also a fossil reviving machine. You see, this machine was specifically designed for this mission, with it, we can revive fossil Pokemon and make a fortune selling them on the black market, but not all the fossils are in there, stored in the main body are the three fossils that were the most powerful, according to our computer. We want to keep the best for ourselves as they will make excellent workers."

"That's great that you told them our plans, now can we just get going? Seriously," grumbled Nick, the one who appeared in charge.

"Eh? Oh whatever, Robo-Trainer, continue with your fight," the MAD scientist said. The robot's lens glowed again and started speaking.

_Kabuto, use Water Gun, _it spoke. Kabuto blasted water from where it's mouth must be in the dark part of it's body at Lucas and Alex.

Jumping to the side Alex yelled, "Hey! We haven't even sent out our Pokemon, I won't take that, go Charmeleon!"

"What are you doing?" Lucas said to him, "Charmeleon has a double weakness to Kabuto!"

"Seeing as the gym leader here is a rock type user, I want to get some training done before I face him, and besides, Charmeleon knows Metal Claw, that beats rock," Alex coolly replied.

"Whatever, Bulbasaur! Come out and use Razor Leaf!" commanded Lucas. His grass Pokemon formed and raised it's back legs to release dozens of leaves from the bulb on it's back.

_Kabuto use Water Gun to dodge _the robot said. Kabuto faced the ground and released another jet of water, except this time it was used to fly into the air and out of harms way.

"Charmeleon when that comes down use Metal Claw," Alex told his Pokemon.

"Char," it replied. Once Kabuto was in range Charmeleon's claws glowed that silver color and it ran at the fossil Pokemon. Since it's back was to Charmeleon it couldn't do anything and was helpless to the super effective attack. Kabuto squealed as it was practically flung from the hit and smacked into the floor. Now the robot's left arm aimed at Charmeleon and shot an infra-red light at it.

_Subject is at 47% of it's strength, searching for weak spot... weak spot detected, Kabuto, use Ancient Power at Charmeleon's stomach area._

Wondering what this attack was everyone waited to see Kabuto create perfectly round stones out of thin air that contained a golden glow around them, they were then shot forward, all aiming at where Kabuto was told to shoot at.

"Uh oh... Charmeleon get out of the way!" screamed Alex. Charmeleon ran from where he was just standing and if he hesitated any longer he would have probably been blown back by flying projectiles of doom! As each rock hit the floor it made a small crater that eventually connected with other small craters as they all struck the same area. Now in the middle of the field was a rut that acted pretty much like the borderline of the middle of a battlefield. Charmeleon panted and looked at Bulbasaur for help.

_Switch to: The Pokemon's point of view_

"How do we, *huff *, beat that thing? Although my Metal Claw really, *huff *, hurt it that isn't enough," gasped Charmeleon.

"I think we'll have to make some team attack, maybe if we do something like that we can take it down," guessed Bulbasaur.

"It'll have to do, but we can't get it through to our trainers so we'll have to fight on our own."

"Agreed."

_Back to: The trainer's point of view_

Alex tried forming a plan in his head when he saw Charmeleon and Bulbasaur running at Kabuto, "Wait guys! Stop!" But too late, Bulbasaur sent out it's vines and grabbed them around Charmeleon, then sent it into the air soaring. Charmeleon used Metal Claw and was heading straight for Kabuto, which was foaming at the mouth, starting a Water Gun attack. Before it could launch the attack though, Bulbasaur still had it's vines out and swung them at Kabuto. Kabuto wasn't expecting this and was about to get hit if it wasn't for the Robo-Trainer using it's sensors.

_Kabuto, duck down, _it commanded. Kabuto fell down on to it's legs and just avoided getting smacked to the wall, but you can't say the same for Charmeleon, who didn't plan things right. The poor fire type didn't take much damage from the vines because it wasn't super effective, but the wall sure hurt. Both Pokemon returned back to their trainer's side.

"That didn't work, but good try," Alex praised, patting his Pokemon on the head.

"How about you help us get untied and we can actually help fight!" Derek grumpily said.

"Yeah, that actually would help."

"You think?" So Alex had his Pokemon cut the rope that trapped his two friends, and they stood up and stretched after being hunched up on the floor.

"Aaah, that's better, now, before I help, does anybody have a revive with them? My Pokemon are out," said Quinton.

"You are pretty useless, you know that Quinton," insulted Alex, pulling a revive from his bag. He handed it to his friend and focused back at the battle, seeing that Derek had Wartortle out and it was already attacking Kabuto.

"Let's let the others handle this for now, seeing as they were 'sitting this out'," suggested Lucas.

"Yeah, I'm with you," agreed Alex. They walked back to the doorway and sat down, watching more for their entertainment. Quinton joined in the fight and had his Nidoran use Double Kick on Kabuto, but only one kick made contact, the other accidentally knocking back Wartortle.

After seeing Kabuto beat up their friends Pokemon for a while they got back up and sent back out their Pokemon to fight.

"Alright Charmeleon use Metal Claw!" shouted out Alex. Charmeleon ran up from behind everyone and thrust down it's arm for the finishing blow. Kabuto flew back and was out cold before it even landed.

Charmeleon beamed with pride at winning the fight, but Wartortle was mad at it for taking the glory. "Nice Alex," Derek said while glowering.

"Awww, why thank you," Alex said in a stupid voice. Just then Kabuto was returned and another pokeball came halfway out of the launcher arm.

_Omanyte, come onto the field, _the robot announced. The pokeball flew onto the field to reveal a large, light tan shell with a small sky blue face coming from the front. The face had several short tentacles where the mouth must be hiding under.

_Water Gun at Nidoran_ the robot said. Omanyte blasted water from underneath the tentacles and the attack made Nidoran tumble backwards until striking the wall, which by now the room had all of it's walls cracked.

"Bulbasaur use Razor Leaf!" said Lucas. The grass type sent another barrage of leaves at the enemy, and this one was slower than Kabuto. Omanyte couldn't move in time and fell on it's side, now it was 100% immobile.

Everyone had commanded an attack at Omanyte and with the combined power the match ended faster than the one before.

"Hah! Even if you defeated those two fossil Pokemon I still have one more, and it is even more powerful than Kabuto and Omanyte's strength combined!" cackled the scientist, "Now Robo-Trainer, it's time to revive our secret weapon!"

"It's not going to be so secret anymore," pointed out Nick.

"Oh be quiet, don't rain on my parade."

Nick was going to respond back but stopped as a loud whirring noise came from the Robo-Trainer. They knew it was reviving the fossil that was stored in it's body and was going to use it against the four trainers. However Alex wasn't going to let this happen.

"Shellder come on out! Use Icicle Spear at that robot!" called out Alex. He tossed a pokeball several feet in front of him and out came his purple bivalve shell Pokemon. Remembering the command it was told Shellder's shell opened up more and the water type spit several icicles at the robot. They shattered when they hit the machine and did nothing.

"You think you can stop it with that?" taunted, you guessed it, the scientist.

"Well maybe not Shellder alone, but how about this? Charmeleon use Ember and after that use Icicle Spear Shellder!" Alex commanded. Fiery bullets came from Charmeleon's mouth and struck the front side of the Robo-Trainer. Although the attack didn't harm the machine it left most of the front side red hot, Shellder came in and again used Icicle Spear.

Now that the metal was hot the icicles cut through it like butter, (not sure if the science of what just happened is real... don't judge me.) Electricity sparked and the lens began to blink out of control, the machine violently shook until it fell to pieces in an explosion. Scrap pieces of metal shot everywhere and people from the other room screamed.

"We have to put out the flames and get the people untied! Oh yeah, don't forget the fossils!" Lucas said. They broke up, Alex went to untie the captured people, Derek to use Wartortle and put out the fire, and Lucas and Quinton to get the fossils from being stolen.

Once everything was under control, the people free, the fire out, the fossils safe from being taken by the grunts, the four trainers faced the the two Rockets in the room.

"Okay," Lucas said, picking up two pokeballs, "you're trapped, you can't use your 'secret weapon', and we have your Omanyte and Kabuto right here."

"That may be the case, but we're not ones to get captured so easily!" Nick said. Just then, as if on cue, the ceiling broke and after avoiding the falling rubble, they looked up to see a helicopter with a ladder dangling from the side. Two Grunts waited on the roof of the building for Nick and the scientist to get up using the ladder from the helicopter as it moved down for them to board.

"See you suckers!" Nick shouted down as he waved bye. The helicopter took off when the Grunts got in and gave the okay, and was soon just a speck in the great blue sky. Things became very silent as everyone stared up towards the gaping hole, only to be broken by police officers running to the room.

"What's all the commotion? And why is Team Rocket gone?" asked an officer.

"They had helicopters, they used them to get away, and it worked," grumbled Lucas.

"Well was anything stolen?" the officer replied.

"Team Rocket wanted to steal the fossils, we stopped them, but they revived two and almost had one other restored, other than that I think everything is all right, besides this room," explained Alex.

"That's alright, we can get it repaired over time," someone said, a man in a blue-grey business suit came up, "let me introduce myself, I am the head of the museum, and I understand we couldn't have saved everything from damage. You kids have proven yourselves to be quite the powerful trainers, now you should get going, we'll take it from here, and could I see those fossil Pokemon? I believe they are museum property, and they will make nice attractions." Lucas handed the pokeballs over to the man and walked out of the security room.

"Hey Lucas wait up!" Alex said, "What's wrong? Aren't you glad we at least stopped them from stealing?"

"That's okay, but I hoped to get them arrested after what they did to my family," Lucas said.

"Sure Team Rocket took over your family's ranch, but it wasn't probably the ones that were here," said Alex.

"Yes it was, I remember Nick's face, he was the one who commanded the whole operation, look, I don't feel up to battling right now, you go on ahead. Tell the others this too, you can take on the gym and then leave without me, after all, we were going to split up after Pewter City."

"O- okay, I will tell the others, but are you sure?"

"Yes"

"Alright then, see you whenever," Alex said as he walked off. He was not used to seeing Lucas like this, but he wasn't going to be a bother and try to help him, he knew this problem would only be solved by himself, so just let him be.

"Hey Alex, what's up with Lucas," Quinton asked as he and Derek walked up to him.

"I don't know, but he said we can go on and leave without him once I get my badge, he said it's okay. I actually think he needs this time to be alone, after all he said to me that Nick was the one who was in charge of taking his family's Tauros ranch."

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Oh, then you're right, we should let him be, how about we get our Pokemon healed and then watch you battle the gym leader," thought Quinton.

"That sounds like a plan to me, man, Charmeleon and Shellder must be tired, they could definitely use a healing," agreed Alex. Now that they were all agreed on the plan, they walked down the steps of the museum. The crowd from earlier was dispersing but there was still some groups of people waiting to see if anything would happen. The three turned around to take a look at the museum, from here it looked as if nothing happened, but if anybody took a look inside they would see things out of place, burn marks, and the remains of a battle.

"Well, there's nothing we can do now, let's just get to the Pokemon Center," Alex said as they took there last look at the museum.

"Well that didn't work as we planned," Nick said.

"Eh, who could predict some trainers, especially that young, getting in our way," the scientist replied.

"So I guess I'll have to report to the boss that our mission was a fail."

"Not quite, you see, amidst the chaos of the Robo-Trainer's explosion, I dug through it's remains and found this," the scientist said back, holding up a small oval shaped piece of amber. He laughed wickedly as Nick could only guess why, it didn't matter, as long as he had something good to report he wouldn't get chewed out. The rest of the ride went in silence as the helicopter flew in between two mountains and off into the night sky.


	12. Farewell Pewter

"Okay now, let's win me a badge!" Alex said out loud as he left the Pokemon Center. Several people near the building looked at him which made Derek and Quinton, who were following Alex, look down and let Alex move a little bit ahead of them.

"Alex do you really have to shout so loud?" snapped Derek.

"It wouldn't be shouting if it wasn't loud, right?" Alex said back.

"Whatever, just get your badge."

"That's the spirit," Alex mocked. They walked on to find the gym where Brock was waiting for his next battle. Even though they've been there before it was hard to locate because the gym looked like a very, very large rock, and the city had tons of rocks here, but there was a sign in bright red saying Pewter City Gym.

"Well here we are," said Alex.

"What are you planning to do? Are you actually thinking of using Charmeleon or are you just going to let Shellder get the job done?" asked Quinton.

Alex turned his head around partly and said, "I plan on using both, after all that battling in the museum, it would be a waste to leave Charmeleon out. Don't worry, I know what I'm doing." So he pushed the doors open and walked into the dimly lit building.

"Hey Brock! I'm here for a gym battle if you have the time!" called out Alex.

On the other side of the room two feet could be seen moving forward several steps, "If you're ready, then let's do this, ref, get prepared for a battle."

To Alex's right a man holding a red flag and a green flag stepped up to the sidelines, "Okay then, both trainers please step up to the trainer boxes," once Alex made it to the designated spot he continued, "Both trainers will use two Pokemon, only the challenger may substitute Pokemon during the match, once both Pokemon of a trainer have been defeated the battle is over, now please send out your Pokemon."

Brock sent his out first, "Go Geodude!" From his pokeball came the small rock with two arms Alex has seen before in Quinton's match.

_That's what I was hoping he would use _Alex thought, "Charmeleon come on out!"

"Char!" the fire type yelled after being sent out of it's ball.

"Let the battle begin!" the ref announced. Brock was fast and commanded Geodude to use Rock Throw, but Charmeleon jumped out of the way with Alex's say-so.

"Now use Metal Claw!" Charmeleon ran at Geodude with quick speed and glowing claws, ready to take it down.

"Like I haven't seen that before, Geodude use Rollout," Brock said. Geodude got to the floor and started spinning at Alex's Pokemon, Charmeleon tried to hit Geodude but it was to fast and knocked it back to a rock on the field.

"Okay, that didn't work so Charmeleon use Ember!" shouted Alex.

"What's he doing? He should know that move doesn't do much to a rock type," Quinton said as he watched the fight.

"I think because Rollout gets stronger every time it's used Alex wants to fight from a distance and use the distance to let Geodude miss with it's next attack, so Rollout will lose all the power," Derek rolled out quickly.

"Char!" the fire type screamed as Geodude came up with another Rollout.

"Don't let that stop you, Metal Claw!" The claws began to glow on it's left arm and Charmeleon used the close range to score a big strike on Geodude's face. The rock type flinched and couldn't do anything as Charmeleon was commanded to use Metal Claw again.

"That's it Geodude use Rock Tomb!" called out Brock. Geodude pounded the ground with it's fists and several pillars of rock came from the ground to trap Charmeleon in a cone shaped prison, but the attack wasn't over. The rocks almost instantly cracked and fell to pieces on Charmeleon.

"No!" yelled Alex.

To his amazement Charmeleon was slowly getting out of the pile of rocks and glared at Geodude with intense fury.

"Awesome! Now strike with another Metal Claw!" commanded Alex. Charmeleon leaped into the air and came down on Geodude with steely claws swiping it across the top of it's head.

Geodude stopped floating and came down with closed eyes, "Geodude is unable to battle!" announced the ref.

Brock returned his Pokemon and pulled out a new pokeball, Alex knew what was coming and switched his Pokemon.

"Thank you Charmeleon, you did great," he said as it was returned to it's pokeball, "Now come on out Shellder!" Shellder popped out closed up but opened when it realized it was in a battle and it's long tongue slid out.

"Onix come out!" Brock said as he threw his pokeball onto the field. The large rock Pokemon roared and stared down at Shellder, who looked afraid of it's large opponent.

"Let the battle begin!"

"How about we end this quick with Water Gun!" Alex said to Shellder. Shellder sent out it's stream of water at Onix, and because it was such a big target Onix took the blow before it could move right in the head.

"Onix get out of the way with Dig!" Brock commanded. Onix launched down at the field headfirst and instead of just making a dent it actually started tunneling down under.

"Uh-oh, this puts a hole in my plan," Alex silently said to himself, "Watch out Shellder! I don't know where Onix will strike but be prepared!" Shellder hopped around to face Alex and made a noise to let him know it understood. That didn't make it prepared though for when Onix came from the ground right beneath Shellder and tossed it at the ceiling.

"Shellder no!" Alex cried out in terror as his Pokemon fell. Shellder didn't fall to the ground but Alex thought it wasn't that much safe when he saw it land on Onix's head.

With a shout from Brock, Onix dived at the ground to dig again, it was going to smack Shellder into the ground and then strike it again, Alex had to do something fast.

"Use Water Gun to jet yourself away!" Alex shouted almost instantly after he came up with the idea. Shellder blasted Onix's head with Water Gun and flew off in a spiral just before it would have been crushed. This time Onix came up quick and tried to hit Shellder before it even made it to the ground, but now Alex was swinging the battle's momentum to his favor.

"Clamp down on Onix's horn, then use Water Gun again!" Shellder heard it's trainer's call and closed up on the horn on Onix's head, then released another spray of water, but because Onix's horn was right in front of it's mouth the water came out at the sides as if someone put their thumb on the opening of a hose. Onix was shaking it's head violently trying to get Shellder off, but in the end it fell down defeated.

"Yes! You did it Shellder!" Alex cheered after the ref declared Onix unable to continue fighting.

Returning his Pokemon he walked up to Brock on the other end of the field.

"You have defeated me in a fair match, so that earns you the Boulder Badge," Brock said to Alex. He put his hand forward and dropped a hexagonal, gray object the size of a dime into Alex's palm, his first badge.

"Thanks, this now leaves me to get seven more badges," Alex proudly told him.

"And also for defeating the Pewter Gym you receive this TM, the move Rock Tomb, you haven't seen it in action much this battle, but it does help when trying to stop opponents," the ref said as he walked up to Alex to give him a very small disk that was slightly larger than the badge.

"This is great, I'll definitely use it," said Alex. He walked out glad to have won his first badge and made his way through the streets to the eastern edge of the city.

"So this is where we split up, now because Derek got his badge first, he walks out first and we'll wait for twenty minutes, then Quinton, and finally me," Alex remembered, as this was their plan before they went on their journey.

"Yep, now I guess I will see you whenever," Derek said as he walked down the dirt road to Cerulean City.

Alex and Quinton talked by the road until Quinton's watch beeped, signaling his time to go. He waved goodbye and took to the trail.

It was ten minutes after Quinton left when Alex smiled at random, "Nobody's around, so they won't know I left early, just to be safe I'll take an out of the way path." Proud of his sneakiness Alex walked down the road until after a while he turned and went through a slightly wooded area.

"Wow, it really got foggy," he said as he got into a more tree-filled part of the route. He pulled out a flashlight to see where he was going and spooked some Pidgeys that were sleeping.

"I can't tell if it's night, but if those Pidgeys were sleeping, then it must be, I think I'll have to pull out my sleeping bag here," Alex said when he found a tiny clearing to sleep at. Setting up his sleeping bag Alex got in and closed his eyes, thinking of all that has happened today.

It was early morning when he woke up and looked around, noticing that the fog had disappeared, strange that there wasn't any in the morning. He shrugged it off and got ready for the day, zipped up his sleeping bag, and got going. Seeing as it has been a whole night Alex thought he could walk on the main trail, which was a lot more convenient than weaving through trees and over moldy logs.

About an hour and a half later he found himself at the cave to a large mountain, he remembered it being called something like Mt. Moon but he wasn't totally sure. Just before walking through to the inside of the cave a snoring sound came from the right.

Turning Alex saw Quinton sleeping on a large rock with his right arm dangling down, _Did he walk all night to get here? _wondered Alex. Ignoring his sleeping friend he continued on to the cave.

Inside it was very dark, so dark Alex felt as if night came early, so he got out his flashlight. He flipped the switch and looked around to figure out which way to go. Seeing as every direction looked to go somewhere he simply picked forward.

"Geo!" cried out a Geodude when Alex tripped over something. He jumped then fast-walked away to avoid getting attacked, boy caves were a lot different than normal routes. Looking forward again Alex wandered aimlessly through the dark terrain hoping he would find his way through. Up ahead he saw a flash of light and moved faster to get a closer look.

Tip-toeing slowly he found someone that he wasn't all that glad to see. It was Drew, from the Viridian Forest, training his Pikachu against another yellow Pokemon. Pulling out his pokedex Alex found out this Pokemon was a Kakuna, which evolves from a little brown bug Pokemon named Weedle. The weird thing was that Kakuna don't live in caves, they're forest Pokemon, so what is one doing in a mountain?

"Come on Kakuna! Fight back! Use Poison Sting!" shouted Drew, who now on closer inspection had stopped sporting the mohawk and using white hair color, as well as taking out the nose piercing, at least now he looked more decent. Although Kakuna was given a command it did nothing, not even budging.

"How come you could fight as a Weedle but now all you can use is Harden? How am I supposed to get a strong Beedrill if you can't even evolve into one? Maybe I should just release you," fumed Drew.

Not wanting to get involved in this Alex slowly walked around the area Drew was at and acted like he heard nothing.

"Hey! It's you from the forest! Remember me?" Drew said from behind Alex.

"Oh... hey Drew, I see you got some... training going on," Alex slowly said as he turned.

"Yeah, and my dumb Kakuna can't do anything, seeing as it is useless I might just let it go, or I could give it to you, you seem to care for Pokemon that can't do anything," taunted Drew. Alex was feeling a twitch in his temples and just stared, thinking what to say.

"So you just gonna stand there?"

"Well actually I have to get going, and even though I'm no expert, I'm guessing that you just need time to let Kakuna evolve, I don't know, that's what I would do."

"Just go, I don't want to hear your garbage."

"Whatever." So they left at that. Alex felt sorry for the Kakuna, seeing it being attacked by Pikachu and not being able to do anything. He didn't want to bother though, no sense in getting into a problem.

"You know, I think I might be able to find a really cool Pokemon here if I look hard enough," Alex said to himself. "But where should I begin to look?"

Checking every place he went Alex found nothing but Geodudes, and he wasn't interested in them. But then, up above, a _whoosh _sound came from above and Alex looked to see a Zubat.

"I've seen one of the Rocket people use one of these, and I think they could come in handy with fighting. Alright then, it's settled, Shellder use Icicle Spear!" Alex yelled as he sent out his Pokemon. Shellder came out and already began it's attack, but since it all happened to quick the aim wasn't that great and Zubat only took one hit. To retaliate Zubat used Leech Life and bit it's fangs into Shellder's upper shell. Little specks of light came out of Shellder and absorbed into Zubat's body, Shellder wailed.

"Hit it with Clamp!" commanded Alex. Shellder stopped wailing and hopped slightly, and it only needed that small jump to hold down on Zubat's lower body to stop it from attacking, and moving.

"Here comes the pokeball!" Alex said when he tossed a rotating pokeball at the struggling poison type.

The ball bounced off Zubat's head and sucked the wild Pokemon in, and shook for several seconds. It finally clicked which signaled Zubat had been caught.

A short distance away there was a clapping noise, "Well done, you caught a Pokemon that can barely do anything."

Looking back Alex saw Drew walking, Pikachu following right behind him. "What makes you say that?"

"Oh nothing besides the fact that all these Zubat can only use Leech Life for an attack!" he sneered. Checking his pokedex on the pokeball Alex saw that his Zubat only knew Leech Life and Supersonic, not the same as what the Grunt's Zubat knew.

"Just wait, once I get training to Zubat it'll be knowing more powerful moves," Alex retorted.

"That is if you can even get it to win a fight."

"I just want to know Drew, what is it that makes you think I'm a bad trainer?"

"It doesn't take a genius to see who are the winners and the losers, when I first saw you I could smell the stench of a loser coming from you!"

"Well have you caught any Pokemon here that is deemed 'worthy' to you?"

"Right here," Drew coolly replied, carelessly tossing a pokeball anywhere to reveal a Pokemon.

Forming from the pokeball came a short human-shaped Pokemon, it had a light gray-blue skin with three light tan bumps(?) going across the top of it's head. It did not look much but since it was owned by Drew it obviously had to be something with power.

As Alex was about to use his pokedex Drew stopped him midway. "You don't need to use that , I can tell you it is a Machop." This so called Machop did not appear to really have much power in it, but then with a command to show off it's strength, Machop lifted a boulder easily with one arm that would have taken a human bodybuilder to lift with two.

"See how powerful it is? With this I could win the Indigo League flat out," Drew bragged. Alex just sighed silently as he endured this long, boring talk.

"Well if you don't mind, I'll be going," Alex said as he turned and walked away. Drew was yelling to come back and some other things that couldn't be heard after a certain distance so the trainer just kept going, hopefully towards the end of the cave.


	13. Getting out of the rough

"You know, I think I should have just walked over the mountain instead, it probably would have been a quicker way to get to Cerulean City," Alex said to himself. He had walked for who knows how long after seeing Drew and he became lost. This put a hole in his plans as he hoped to make it through the mountain before the day was over, but now it seemed he might have to spend the night in the dark caves.

"Well maybe I should at least take advantage of this time and train my Pokemon, now look at me, I'm talking to myself! It's not a bad idea though..." the wandering trainer suggested to himself. So now every time he passed a Geodude, Zubat, or any other wild Pokemon he would battle them. His Charmeleon seemed to have the biggest trouble fighting since it was a fire type in a rock type area, but it managed, Shellder was easily taking down it's opponents, and Zubat was... well it was at least trying it's best.

"Okay Zubat, try Leech Life again," Alex said as he fought another Zubat. He has thought of giving up on this Pokemon, but he wouldn't give Drew the satisfaction of proving him right about Zubat, he would do his best to raise Zubat to be powerful enough to take down his Machop.

However that may take a while...

"No! Zubat return," Alex sighed, it had just lost by a Wing Attack, obviously a higher leveled Pokemon.

"Okay I guess it is time to get going," Alex said to himself. He decided not to finish off the wild Zubat and turned away, not really sure if he was heading in the right direction. All he knew was that he was taking a different direction than he came from so he at least had some intuition of the right way.

Soon he came to a point where he didn't need a flashlight, that was a good sign, light means he is almost out of the cave!

"Well this is good, but now which way do I go?" wondered the trainer. A strange noise made him look back to see a little orange Pokemon, it was on six legs, the first two were more like big pincers, and then it had large blue eyes, and finally on it's back were two small red mushrooms.

_Paras, the Mushroom Pokemon, this Pokemon absorbs nutrients in the caves it lives in and uses them to help the mushrooms on it's back grow. _The pokedex said when it was aimed at the small Pokemon.

"You don't look that vicious to me," Alex said as he bent down to meet Paras at an eye level. Before he got down to his knees a whole swarm of Paras came and completely surrounded him.

"Uh oh, did I get in your territory?" Alex shakily asked the bugs. In an act of panic he threw out a pokeball but the Pokemon that came out was a defeated Zubat.

"Dangit," the trapped trainer muttered. Instead of an attack that was expected, the Paras that first came up inspected Zubat then began to grow polyps on the mushrooms place on it's back. The polyps floated off the mushrooms and attached on to Zubat, Alex worried if it was an attack but it seemed to actually heal Zubat. Checking his pokedex, Alex found out this:

_Paras can use special polyps on their mushrooms to heal others using their own health. It is used to help others of their colony to get better after being hurt in any scenario._

"Wow, that's really nice of you guys," thanked Alex, then to himself, "I wonder if I should catch one, it could help to have my own healer on the team if in a place far from civilization. Of course I would have to train it as well, not just make it have one sole purpose."

His Zubat eventually didn't need the polyps anymore because it was back in the air and happily screeching. Alex was going to actually catch one of the Paras but he was interrupted by a Poison Sting hitting the colony from behind him. Turning, the trainer saw Drew with a big, pale orange bug with a black ring on it's lower body where a stinger was too. Two more stingers were on the arms of the Pokemon where the hands would have been, on it's face were two large red eyes, and fast moving wings were buzzing away on it's back.

"What do you think of my new Pokemon?" asked Drew. Alex used the pokedex to find out this Pokemon was called a Beedrill, and it was apparently a very nasty Pokemon that was poisonous with it's stingers. This must have been what Kakuna evolved into.

"Drew! Why did you do that! I was going to catch one of those!" Alex yelled at Drew. After the surprise of the Poison Sting the colony of Paras fled into the darkness of the cave, probably not going to come out for hours.

"Well I think it's fun to get in your way, your angry reactions are so amusing," Drew laughingly said back.

"You really do get in my way, and this is only the second time I've ran into you!"

"Then I guess I'm good."

"I guess you ar- I mean- Drew do you really have to do this to me!"

"Ha! See, it's fun to watch you stumble on your words. You should really learn to control your temper, you are way angrier than you need to be."

"Only because you make people this way!"

"How immature..."

"You think, that I'm, immature? I did not win a badge and make it through most of this cave by luck, I worked hard to raise my Pokemon and get through what obstacles I've faced, I am not immature."  
"You know, you sound like you are some experienced trainer, but all you are is some little brat with one badge."

"Okay, I'm going to respond calmly and say that you are talking to me like a little child, but you are probably just a little older than me, and if you think being a 'brat with one badge' describes what I amount up to, why don't you battle me to prove that right?" Alex called out.

"Fine, I've beaten you once, I can beat you again," Drew said back.

"Don't forget I've beaten you too."

"I remember, and then I gave you your payback."

"What? How did you get your-," and then Alex remembered back at Viridian Forest when something happened, "you set fire to the camp!"

"So you put it together huh? Yeah I did that, you really hurt my pride by defeating my strongest Pokemon."

"So that means you can torch my stuff? And you say I'm immature!" exclaimed Alex. Now this battle seemed to carry more meaning to him, how could he attempt arson on him!

"Alright, I'm sending out Shellder!" Alex said, then tossed his pokeball halfway across the battlefield. Shellder came out looking ready for battle, that was a good sign.

"Well then I'll start with Beedrill," Drew coolly said. Beedrill glided over to hover above Shellder and gave it a blank stare, or at least that is what it looked like.

"Then let the battle begin! Now Shellder knock it out of the air with Water Gun!" Alex started out. Shellder gushed out a jet stream of water aimed at Beedrill's middle but the bug swiftly flew to the side. Shellder attempted several times before taking a rest and Beedrill had dodged all attempts.

"Beedrill use Poison Sting!" said Drew. With one stinger on it's arm Beedrill shot purple needles at Shellder, and they would have hurt badly if it weren't for a quick move by Alex.

"Harden!" shouted Alex. Shellder closed up and a flash of light gleamed off it's shell. The Poison Sting hit the top half but were deflected off and smashed to bits as they came into contact with the ground.

"Now try Water Gun again!"

"Shellder!" the Pokemon replied, then right after that it hit it's opponent and drenched it's wings. Beedrill could no longer fly and fell onto the floor, it landed on it's back and could not turn or get up.

"Perfect, now let's try Icicle Spear!" commanded Alex. Shellder launched it's projectiles into the air and they rained, or rather hailed, down on Beedrill. It could do nothing as the icicles struck it multiple times.

"Let's use that again!"

So Shellder released the icy attack again but Drew had a new plan.

"Use Poison Sting to shatter the icicles Beedrill," he said. Beedrill aimed it's arms up towards the roof of the cave and used it's attack. Surprisingly the needles were able to break every icicle down to small bits of frost.

"Now use it again at Shellder!"

"Bee!" the Pokemon said. Now it lowered it's arms slightly blasted the needles at Shellder.

_Why does he keep using that move? _Wondered Alex. He didn't have time to think why because he needed to protect his Pokemon.

"Use harden again!"

Shellder closed up again and let the needles harmlessly hit it, then opened up to wait for the next attack. After that attack Beedrill's wings had dried off and it could get back into the air again after using it's arms to support itself. Now Drew had more options to use for attacks.

"Fly to the right and hit Shellder with Poison Sting at it's side!" shouted Drew.

"Again?" Alex said to himself, "Okay Shellder, now let's use Water Gun!" Shellder hopped and turned to the left then attacked with Water Gun just in time. Not only did it stop the Poison Sting but it also hit Beedrill. This time it did not bring it to the ground but it did some damage.

"Okay, finish Shellder off with Poison Sting so we can end this!" Drew said with an irritated tone. Alex wondered again why he kept commanding for Beedrill to use Poison Sting when he realized that Beedrill must not have evolved from Kakuna not that long ago. The only attack a Weedle can use is Poison Sting, and after evolving it only learns Harden. Beedrill did not have that long to learn any new moves yet, that's why Drew kept wanting it to use Poison Sting.

However that did not matter, Alex had Shellder use Harden and even if he did not, the Poison Sting could not have defeated his Pokemon because it had not been hurt once.

"Aagh! Why can't you hit it!" Drew yelled at his Pokemon. Beedrill turned back to face it's trainer and gave a sound that probably meant it was trying it's best.

"Geez, you're really taking this out on your Pokemon?" asked Alex, "That's just not right, but whatever, Shellder use Water Gun to finish it!"

"Shellder!" The water type said before it blasted back Beedrill at the cave wall.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Drew yelled as he stomped on the ground repeatedly, "Fine then, I'll just come back with Machop!"

Drew's pokeball spun rapidly and landed with a loud thud then bounced off the ground to let out Machop.

"Now let's get this started! Machop use Low Kick!" howled Drew. Machop ran right up to Shellder before Alex could say anything and kicked it across the ground like a soccer ball. Shellder rotated very quickly and crashed right into the side of the cave.

"Shellder are you okay?" Alex asked. Shellder focused itself back at Machop, but it was still a little dazed.

"Okay, just hang in there. Now let's keep Machop at bay with Icicle Spear!" said Alex. Shellder gave a weak attempt to hit Machop, but it easily blocked all the oncoming icicles without Drew needing to command it. Then Drew told it to come down on Shellder with a Karate Chop.

Machop leaped up and put it's right arm forward to bring down on top of Shellder. Alex told Shellder to use Water Gun but it was too weak to move fast enough before Machop thrust it's arm on the water type's shell.

"Shell... der" was all it said before it passed out.

"Ha, piece of cake," Drew insulted.

"It didn't look that way for your Beedrill," was Alex's comeback.

Drew glared, "Oh be quiet, now let's see what else you've got."

"I'll gladly show you, Zubat go!" Alex confidently said. He wasn't exactly sure to use Zubat against Machop after what he has seen, but seeing as fighting has a double weakness to poison and flying, it's worth the risk.

"Zubat use Leech Life!"

"Dodge it!"

Machop was quick with it's command, but too quick. Machop made the mistake of moving aside before Zubat could even attack Zubat just re-aimed itself and let out a single white sliver. That sliver landed itself right on Machop's arm and sucked some energy out, however not much. After taking all that it could the sliver dispersed into bits of light and went straight back to Zubat.

"Wow, I'm really in trouble, your Zubat can use Leech Life!" Drew sarcastically said to Alex.

"At least Zubat isn't stupid enough to dodge _before _the attack," came back Alex.

"Pff, Machop go forward and use Karate Chop."

"Chop," it said back. The fighting type lunged into the air and prepared to hit Zubat, but Alex put a stop to that plan.

"Zubat, confuse it with Supersonic," calmly commanded Alex. Zubat screeched and several circles of visible sound waves formed and surrounded Machop.

Now that it was confused Machop let down it's hand and went completely off course into a stalactite. Alex's plan was that as long as Machop was confused it probably won't be able to hurt Zubat and instead hurt itself.

"Use Karate Chop again!"

Machop attempted the attack again but it slammed it's hand on it's forehead. Apparently it was not that smart because even if any other Pokemon was confused it probably wouldn't hit itself just like that.

"Okay return Machop, you're not that much help here," Drew admitted. He pulled out Machop's pokeball and returned it, then switched it with another pokeball, and Alex knew what was coming up.

"Pikachu, go!" Drew said. He swung his arm and let loose the ball containing his strongest pokemon. Pikachu appeared in a flash and let sparks dance along it's cheeks.

"Okay Pikachu use Thundershock!" Drew called out. Pikachu tensed up and sent a stream of lightning straight towards Zubat.

"Duck beneath the attack!" Alex immediately commanded Zubat. Zubat quickly dived beneath the Thundershock in a split second before it would have zapped it.

"I'll admit you got lucky but can you dodge it a second time?" Drew mocked. Pikachu took the hint and sent out another bolt, and it moved too quick for Alex to say anything so all he could do was watch and see Zubat be electrocuted and drop to the ground.

"Zubat no! Return," Alex sadly said. Zubat squeaked a small noise before the red beam of the pokeball sucked it up. Now it was down to a one-on-one match.

"Charmeleon, it's up to you," Alex sent the last pokeball out to bring Charmeleon. The fire type glared at Pikachu after realizing it was Drew's, Pikachu gave a nasty look right back.

"Alright Charmeleon use Ember," was it's first order. Many bits of fire flew across the cave and lit up the darkness. Pikachu jumped back to avoid being roasted and looked back at Drew so it could be told what to do next.

"I have this new move I want to try out, how about on your pokemon? Pikachu, let's go with Iron Tail!"

"Pika!" the mouse shrieked. It's lightning shaped tail began to glow in a steely-gray color and left a streak of light when Pikachu began to run at Charmeleon.

"Block it with Metal Claw!" Alex said. The lizard's claws on it's right hand extended and glowed to the same color of Pikachu's tail. It then lifted it's arm and used it to stop Pikachu, sparks flew as if the two steel type attacks were actually like swords, but in the end Pikachu was the stronger of the two. Charmeleon fell back hard onto the cold, rocky ground.

"That was fun to watch, how about we go for it again?" Drew suggested to Pikachu. Pikachu nodded and went after Charmeleon again.

"Wait, steel against steel didn't work, so maybe fire against steel will work," Alex thought to himself, "Charmeleon hit it with Ember!"

"Char!" it said, then shot embers at Pikachu. Alex's strategy worked because Pikachu was knocked back by the type advantage in the moves. Alex smirked but stopped when he saw how tired Charmeleon was, it was panting hard and hunching over slightly. Although it had a while to rest in it's pokeball it fought many rock types, so it was pretty worn out, Alex doubted it was going to make it through the match.

Drew told Pikachu to use Thundershock, which was a little worrying as it was a fast attack. Alex did all he could by telling Charmeleon to jump to the side. Charmeleon mustered it's strength and leapt to the side, barely missing the blast.

"Charmeleon, fight back with Ember," Alex said. Charmeleon unleashed with all it's power the biggest volley of embers it has ever made. Alex could tell it was doing this because it wanted to do as much damage as possible before going out, which was a smart idea.

Pikachu had nowhere to run as the range of the attack covered every possible way of escape. Since nothing could be done Pikachu took the hit and flew back into a rock, and it didn't move.

"Well Drew, how's that? Your strongest Pokemon has been defeated, again," Alex said with mocking arrogance.

"Ha! You think Pikachu is down? This is a trick!" Drew laughed. Pikachu got up just to prove Drew's point and sneered at the two.

"Now use Thundershock to finish it off!" Drew wickedly said. Pikachu electrocuted Charmeleon with full force. All the fire type could do was stand and take in the charges, or it was just paralyzed. Next thing that happened was the reptile falling to the ground and not coming back up.

"Char... Charmeleon? Are you okay," Alex asked. Charmeleon did not reply, it only laid there, Pikachu had defeated it.

"I won! My plan always works, make the enemy think they've won then surprise them by coming back to counter!" Drew triumphed.

Alex returned Charmeleon and looked at Drew, he was about to say something but was interrupted by a faint scuttling noise. Out of the darkness came the colony of Paras from before, they probably had watched the whole battle. The biggest one came up to Alex and pointed a claw at the pokeballs in Alex's belt holster, but Alex didn't know what it was trying to say.

"Huh? What are you trying to tell me? Are you trying to help me?" Alex asked. Paras made a motion but it wasn't clear what it meant, but after seeing the confused look on Alex's face, it produced several polyps on it's mushrooms and held them on. Now he knew what it meant, it wanted to heal his Pokemon with the polyps.

"You'd really do that for me?" he asked. Paras made another motion that was definitely a nod and beckoned with it's claws for the trainer to send out his Pokemon. Alex grabbed all three pokeballs and released their contents. None of the Pokemon were conscious when they came out, all had taken a beating from that last battle.

However after not only the big Paras but all the Paras of the colony gave what polyps they could the three began to stir and awaken slowly. The polyps weren't really enough to heal the Pokemon like a Pokemon Center could, but it was enough to the point that they could move, and that was good enough for now.

"Thanks guys, now you should head back to your home, I'll be fine from here," Alex thanked. All the Paras waved a claw at him to show they understood, and began to slowly move into the shadows of the cave, all the polyps they gave had tired them a bit, but they seemed fine and nothing to worry about. But Drew, who was watching this all happen, took an interest in the Paras.

"Wow, those guys can heal others, maybe I should take one, or two," Drew said, "Why don't I catch them all? Let's see what I'll get with this!"

Drew grabbed six pokeballs from his pocket and tossed them into the colony. The Paras screamed and now tried to run into the darkness.

Amidst the chaos there was a sound that meant a pokeball had hit a Paras and both trainers looked to see where it was. After all the Paras had fled there were six pokeballs on the ground, only one had made a sound so that might mean only one of the bugs were caught, but they couldn't be sure.

Drew slowly walked towards the pokeballs, "Let's see how many healers I have now." He picked up the closest one and opened it, nothing came out.

"Whatever, it's just one empty ball," he said, then moved on to the next. The second ball was empty, as well as the third, but the fourth contained a rather small Paras. To Drew's dismay, the last two were also empty, so he wasn't as lucky as he thought.

"What does that say? You threw six pokeballs into a large group of Pokemon where there was barely any space in between two, and yet you could only catch one of them." Alex laughed.

"That was pretty cheap," he said back.

"I think what's cheap is that you tried to catch so many of the Paras when they just got weakened after healing my team. You were just making an easy catch," was Alex's reply.

"Whatever, I'm just going to leave now, it's about time I left this place," the punk said. He then walked on towards where the light seemed to be coming from, and Alex returned his Pokemon. He was going to wait so he wouldn't look like he was going to follow him to get out of the mountain.

After several minutes he began to slowly walk in the same direction his enemy had headed. He really despised Drew, why did he ever have to meet him? It wasn't really meeting, he just happened to decide at random to pick on he and his friends, but why? What was the reason for deciding to be a jerk to him, and why did he seem to use him now? It seems he uses Alex for practicing his nasty and deceiving strategies, as well as capturing Pokemon that were weakened by helping Alex out. He never wanted to see Drew again.

But that was over, what matters now is getting out of the cave, and he is going to do so. He could see the cave getting lighter and lighter, and soon wind could be felt blowing through the cave. Running up a slight hill in the cave Alex let the breeze rush past him and welcomed the light in the distance, he knew that was the way out, all he had to hope was that he didn't make some turn around and end up coming out the Pewter City side. Some small details could be made out as he got closer to the opening, branches of trees, some fairly big rocks, and bushes.

As he kept going he finally made it outside, enjoying the fresh air after all those hours of breathing musty, stuffy air. Looking ahead he saw a trail that went down to a city, it was definitely not the way to Pewter City, so he made it to the right side of Mt. Moon. Now all he had to do was work his way down the path and into Cerulean City, but he figured that could wait.

The sun was setting because when he turned to look back at the mountain he saw a golden outline along it as the sun gave out it's last rays for the day. Why not just sleep here for the night? The gym wasn't going away, and it has been a long day inside the cave.

Alex pulled out a blanket and laid down in the grass beside the trail. It was a real comfortable place and now he fell asleep, thinking of his plans for tomorrow.


	14. Misty and Water Pulse

Sunlight poured over Mt. Moon and shined in Alex's face, making him unable to sleep any longer. Although he had spent the night in a sleeping bag on the ground Alex had slept quite comfortably, and he wished the sun hadn't woken him up. However he should actually get going, just down the path he was on lay Cerulean City, where he will battle for his next badge, and he wanted to get as far ahead of his friends as possible too.

Alex yawned then said out loud, "Well, I better get going, it's time to get that badge." So after packing up he headed out down the steep mountain trail. The trees to both sides of the path were alive with sounds and movement and Alex wondered whether he should train his pokemon. It was a good idea but since it was early in the morning the pokemon were probably foraging for food so he thought it was better not to disturb them.

When Cerulean City was getting closer Alex thought about what he'll do for a strategy against the gym leader, "Let's see, this will be a very makeshift plan since I have no idea what type I'm going to face, but whatever. Charmeleon and Shellder have more battle experience than Zubat, plus they know more moves than it does, so it seems like I should use them, but I might need to let Zubat in for experience. Wow, I never thought it would be a stubborn choice to make, what am I going to use?" And so Alex walked the rest of the way down in silence, only listening to the sounds of the wilderness around him.

The large city stood before Alex leaving him in awe. Tall buildings could be seen from left to right, certainly many more than Pewter City had, as well as being brighter than the gray monotone Pewter was plagued with.

"Wow, I never really realized this, but large-scale cities jump out when you take a good look at the whole picture. It's going to be like going through a maze to find the gym!" Alex exclaimed. He took his first step into the large city and took a good look at everything.

The streets were full of people and stores lined both sides, it seemed as if you could buy anything you needed just here! Although Alex did need to stock up on some supplies he needed to heal his pokemon at the pokemon center, after that harsh battle with Drew his pokemon took quite a nasty beating. After that a group of Paras had helped his pokemon, but they weren't enough to put them back in top condition like a pokemon center could. So before he could do any restock trips or anything else, Alex needed to restore his team.

"Where am I going to find a Center in this place? I just got into this place and I don't know if I am heading further into it or if I'm leaving it. Maybe someone can help me," the lost trainer said to himself. Taking a look into the sidewalk he found a woman walking with a small orange dog pokemon with black stripes on it's back, Alex walked up to her and she stopped, looking confused as to why he wanted to talk with her.

"Hey ma'am, I'm sorry to bother you but I'm not from here and I need to know where the nearest pokemon center is," Alex explained.

"Oh, no problem, just head down the road and take a left, then after that keep going until the second right, there you'll find a pokemon center," the lady directed.

"Okay, thank you!" Alex said and walked on. He followed the woman's directions and found the familiar red building. He walked in and stood in line to get his pokemon healed, which was normal, as many people used the centers, but this line seemed strange. He couldn't figure out why at first, but then he realized that the line was quite long, even for a center. Alex wondered why and decided to ask the nurse when it was his turn.

In a few minutes he made it to the counter where the nurse accepted his pokeballs.

As she inserted the pokeballs into the machine Alex asked his question, "Hey Nurse Joy, why is the line so long?"

After starting the machine the pink haired nurse slowly turned and said, "Well, the gym takes a lot of trainers, and this is the center closest to the gym, that's why many trainers come here to heal their pokemon."

"So the gym leader must be very tough,"

"She is for most, but if you have the right types you can beat her,"

" Hm, well I'm not from here so I don't know the leader, do you know what type she uses?"

"Yes, she is a water type user, and she gives her challengers a rough time," finished the nurse. And with that the healing machine beeped to signal the nurse that the pokemon were healed. Nurse Joy took the pokeballs out and handed them back to Alex.

"Here you go," she said with a smile.

"Thanks!" he said back. With that he left to find the gym, when he turned the corner he realized he should have asked the nurse for directions, but oh well, he figured why not try using his sense of direction.

All he knew was that the gym was close by, so he shouldn't be going too far away from the center. That didn't help much as Alex was lost in the sea of people, he'd make turns that lead him in circles, and even forget what turns he did make.

To try and figure things out, Alex sat down on a bench to think where the gym could be.

"It has to be noticeable in a way that's different from all the other buildings, so it should be a building that's colorful or in a strange architecture. Nurse Joy said the gym leader used water types, so it would probably be a blue building, or have some kind of picture of water on it. Geez why do I talk to myself so much now?" he laughed.

As he looked up after saying that he saw on the other side of the street exactly what he was looking for, the Cerulean Gym.

It was a small, round building, which is probably why Alex didn't find it with all the tall, rectangular skyscrapers around. The outside was a light blue with a glass dome on top, and around the bottom of it all different kinds of coral were painted. Alex went to the cross-walk and made his way to the other side to get in the gym.

The automatic doors slid open and Alex relaxingly walked through. Inside the gym was a darker blue color than the outside, as if you were underwater, and the coral paintings were made inside too. In the middle the arena was a large pool full of crystal clear water with several floating platforms drifting along. At both ends of the field there were two square outlines where the trainer and leader would stand at, which had a different pattern than the rest of the gym floor, which was an alternating blue and aqua-blue tile pattern.

Alex stepped further inside and looked around for someone, "Hello, is anybody here?" There was nothing at first, but then on the far side of the pool the water rippled and up came a girl. She looked to be very young, and had light orange hair that went down to the middle of her neck. She wore a red swimsuit, and that's all that Alex could tell from that far distance, but he didn't care, he just wanted to know if she was the gym leader.

"Hello!" Alex hollered across the room. The girl turned to where she heard the voice and swam to a pool ladder. Once she got out she strained the water out of her hair and grabbed a towel, then walked over to Alex at a quick pace for being on a wet floor.

"Hi! I'm Misty, the gym leader here, did you come here for a battle?" she asked.

"Yeah, is it okay to battle right now? Because I can come back if you want me to," he replied.

"Oh it's fine, we can go now, just let me go back and get the ref," she said.

"Okay, I'll be at my end." And with that she was off, quickly pacing to a back room. Alex moved over to the challenger's box and tried to think of who to use first. He had barely any time to think because Misty was back with another girl holding a red flag and green flag.

"Alright then, you're already at your spot, let me get to mine, and Sadie, you can explain the rules," Misty instructed the girl.

Sadie nodded and turned to Alex, "This match will be two-on-two, you are allowed to switch out at any time, but the gym leader cannot. Once one trainer's pokemon are all defeated, the match is over, and if you beat Misty you'll earn the Cascade Badge." Alex then nodded to her.

"Okay then, are both trainers ready?" Sadie boomed.

"Ready," Misty said, Alex repeated what she said.

"Trainers please send out your first pokemon!"

"Zubat go!" Alex called out.

"I choose, Staryu!" Misty yelled. Out of Misty's pokeball was a different looking pokemon, it was star shaped, and the body was all brown, but in the center there was a red orb held in place but some kind of gold piece. Alex checked it out with it's pokedex to see what it could do, only to hear facts about regenerating broken arms.

"Let the battle begin!" Sadie announced.

"Zubat let's start with Leech Life!" Alex commanded. Zubat squeaked and shot out a white sliver directly at the water pokemon.

"Staryu! Into the pool!" Misty directed while pointing her hand at the water. Staryu jumped down and avoided the little projectile. For a few seconds silence spread over the room but then Staryu soared out of the pool and back on to a floaty.

"Seeing as you're not making any moves I'll go ahead with Water Pulse!" Without hesitating Staryu formed a sphere of water out of nothing and blasted it right at Zubat.

"Move to the side! It won't be able to change direction!" And almost as fast as Staryu reacted Zubat flapped it's wings to boost it to the side. The ball of water kept going and exploded near the glass ceiling.

"Now Zubat! Fight back with Leech Life!"

"Zubat!" the poison type squeaked. Another needle was shot and Misty again told Staryu to go in the water. Alex predicted this to happen and gave his command for Zubat to get this slow pace battle moving.

"Supersonic on the water!"

"Zu- BAAAAATTTTT" screeched the pokemon as it released powerful waves at the water. Since waves moved faster in water than in air Staryu had no time to get out of the blast range as it increased in speed and circumference. Upon passing through the Supersonic the starfish surfaced and drifted along the water, it was practically a sitting duck.

"While you can keep repeating Leech Life, take out as much energy as you can!" Zubat happily went with Alex's plan and shot a Leech Life at the dazed Staryu. Once the attack took in all it could it went straight back to Zubat and another would take it's place. Needle after needle struck the water type and Zubat gained back so much health it probably wasn't even able to take anymore in.

"Come on Staryu! Snap out of it! You have to fight again!" Misty cried out. Surprisingly, Staryu came back to it's senses and somehow jumped out of the water on it's back and onto a platform.

"Alright, your time is up, Staryu, Water Pulse!" Staryu again wasted no time in making it's attack and blasting the sphere of water at Zubat.

Alex, now getting cocky, simply said, "Zubat, move out of the way." Zubat lazily drifted to the side before the attack could nail it.

"Don't get too confident, Rapid Spin!" Misty directed. Staryu jumped into the air and began to spin slowly, it seemed about to land back on the platform, but then it spun faster, and now it could practically fly! Worst part is that it was heading right towards Zubat!

"Zubat! Get away from Staryu!" Alex nervously shouted. However Zubat is not really the fastest fliers, so even Staryu, who doesn't fly, rammed into Zubat within seconds.

Zubat dropped like a rock from the attack, but that wasn't all that Misty had planned. "Finish it with Water Pulse!"

There was nothing Alex could do to stop this attack from hitting Zubat, now he would see the damage this attack could deal, what he saw was not anything he expected.

The ball of water slammed at Zubat's front but instead of exploding it grew and trapped Zubat in it. After that the water that made up the ball rippled and looked like it was putting pressure Zubat in the center, and **then** it exploded. The explosion happened just at the surface of the pool, the ball turned into pillars of violent, foaming water and the force of the blast shot Zubat into the pool, but with this attack so close to the surface the water in the pool erupted from the energy and sent Zubat soaring towards the ceiling. Alex gasped at how perfect the location of the attack was for Misty, it did way more damage than it obviously would have under normal circumstances. He hated to think it, but he admitted in his head that it was pretty cool.

Sadie announced Zubat was out before it descended down, and Alex gratefully returned it before any more damage was done.

"How do you like that? It wasn't planned but even then Staryu's Water Pulse is pretty powerful, and you haven't even seen my strongest pokemon!"

Alex stared blankly in horror that she was right, that one attack, the second one to hit Zubat, easily defeated his pokemon.

"Okay, let's go with Shellder!" The unsure trainer tossed his pokeball on to a floating platform and it almost rolled off into the pool. Shellder flashed to life from the ball then after settling.

"Shell!" the bivalve chirped.

"Interesting choice, using a water type," Misty mused.

"Let the battle begin!"

"Let's take the first attack, use Icicle Spear!" Alex blurted. Shellder spat out a shower of icicles that hailed above Staryu in a menacing appearance. Without a command Staryu nimbly dodged each icicle, rotating to a different arm of it's body with each landing, then with Misty's say so it used Water Gun to try and shoot Shellder off it's platform.

"Use Withdraw!" Shellder rolled it's tongue back and closed it's shell. The move would not hold Shellder's ground, all it did was weaken the damage taken, Alex's mind was too scrambled to think of a way to move Shellder.

The poor shell pokemon flipped backwards from the spray into the depths of the pool and sunk like a rock.

"Perfect, you're trapped" Misty laughed, "Now Staryu use Rapid Spin to hit Shellder from above!" The starfish again began to spin quickly and fly towards Shellder. At first it made a high arc in the air to get above Shellder's spot in the pool, but then began to descend to go for the kill.

Alex thought of what he could do now, and almost immediately an idea popped into his head, "Aim straight up and use Water Gun!" At first he thought it was a good idea, then he realized Shellder probably couldn't hear him underwater.

And then, as if to read his mind, Misty said, "Nice try, but that won't work."

While all that talking had been done Staryu had plunged into the water and struck Shellder. The little bivalve ricochet with surprising speed for being underwater, and flew onto a large platform in the center of the pool, hopping a bit before stopping. After finally settling down the shell opened and both trainers saw a dazed look in Shellder's eyes.

"This doesn't look good," Alex miserably muttered to himself.

Staryu resurfaced and hopped on to the same platform Shellder was resting on.

"This match is as good as over! Staryu, use Rapid Spin!" Misty said. Staryu, always acting swift, became airborne within seconds and made it's last attack on Shellder.

Just as fast as Staryu moved, Alex had another plan, it was risky, but it was all he had left. "Shellder, when it comes within range, use Clamp!"

"Shellder!"

So as Staryu came barreling towards it Shellder lifted it's upper half and waited, then in the fraction of a second it had Shellder clamped down hard on Staryu. Silence followed as Misty and Staryu both had to realize what just happened, but then Staryu began to struggle. It wriggled and shook but Shellder's iron-hard grip would not break.

"What was that you said about the match being over?" Alex smirked.

"Ha! You just got lucky!"

"You can call it that if you like, but whatever. Shellder release Staryu and blast it with Water Gun!"

Shellder muffled something as Staryu was still in it's grip but then somehow spat it several inches, but before Staryu could move it was hit in the face (or whatever) by a torrent of gushing water. Even though it wasn't super-effective the glow in Staryu's red orb died and it fell back.

"Staryu is unable to battle!" declared Sadie.

"Okay, I"ll admit you're good, but the battle is not over yet. Go Starmie!" Misty threw a pokeball onto the center floaty and out came a pokemon similar to Staryu. It was star shaped like it, but there was another upside down star on it's back, and it was a dark purple. The center jewel was still red, but now instead of being perfectly round it was cut into an octagonal shape. Alex checked his pokedex to see what it was, and found it was Staryu's evolved form, and it also became part psychic too, but it didn't seem to know any psychic attacks.

"Hey! Are you going to look at your dex or are we going to battle?"

"Just looking at what I'm up against, I'm ready when you are." At that Misty nodded towards Sadie and she let the battle continue.

"Starmie let's go with Water Pulse!"

Starmie emitted some strange noise and sent a ball of water like the ones before in a bee-line towards Shellder.

Having seen what that attack can do Alex did what he could to stop it, "Deflect it with Icicle Spear!"

Although a little battered Shellder moved quick to attack the sphere with three cones of frozen water, which was all that stood in it's way.

The first icicle missed but did hit Starmie, although lightly, however the second one met with the Water Pulse halfway and a watery explosion engulfed the third. The force from the burst blew back both pokemon, Shellder came inches from the edge, and Starmie, who was heavier, held it's ground better and moved only half a foot back.

"This battle has been going on for a while, your lasting longer than I thought, but now it's time for me to win this, so let's see if you can stall any longer! Starmie, batter it with Swift!" the obviously impatient leader said. Starmie lightly floated in the air, probably due to it's psychic nature, and a faint yellow glow outlined it's body. When the glowing grew more intense small stars appeared around the starfish and propelled towards Shellder.

Alex could see that the attack was doing light damage, but what he also noticed was the stars were pushing Shellder back. After the barrage was over Shellder tottered back and forth as it was halfway off the center floaty.

"Perfect, now we'll finish it with Water Pulse!"

Alex knew it was over with that, the attack wouldn't do the same damage it did with Zubat, but he could see Shellder didn't need that much to be defeated, and even if it didn't beat Shellder, it would fall back into the pool and be unable to move.

He didn't have to worry about that scenario.

Starmie shot one last dark blue ball and upon contact with the wobbly Shellder it went through the same changes as Staryu's did with Zubat. Alex chose not to look, he didn't feel like watching his defeat go down.

"Shellder is unable to battle." Alex heard Sadie call.

"Return," was all Alex said. Even though he didn't see where Shellder went from the attack he could see a spot of purple under the rippling waves.

Misty walked over and said, "Hey, you gave it a good shot, sorry if I got a little rough, and even arrogant sounding, but that's how I get when I battle. You know, maybe you should have been better prepared for this match even if you didn't know what my pokemon were. You should have some way to help your pokemon avoid attacks, like how with Shellder all you could do was let it brace the attack or risk a close range attack on one. I think you shouldn't rush back to fight again, you need to train your pokemon more, I want you to be stronger before you face me."

"Okay," Alex glumly began, "but why are you telling me all this, aren't you supposed to try and defeat me? You know, instead of giving me advice on how to beat you?"

"As a gym leader, I'm supposed to give you a challenging battle, but I'm also supposed to help you become a better trainer. You see? My title means more than just a tough trainer. And besides, now that you know my pokemon, maybe you'll be able to come up with a better strategy than on-the-spot ideas."

"Alright... wait, how do you know my plans were on the spot?"

"Well, it's kind of easy tell how a trainer's plans are made when you're a gym leader," Misty smiled.

Alex smiled too, now feeling better. "Thanks for the advice, but watch out for when I come back, because then I'll be strong enough to beat you!"

"Ha ha ha, I'm glad you've got your spirit back, and I'll be ready for when you return."

"We'll see," Alex cheerfully remarked. And with that he walked out of the gym, first to the pokemon center, but after that he'll be training for a future victory!


	15. Trainer's Plaza

_One thing before reading this story, I replaced the first two chapters with better remakes, they're not as good as I had wanted them to be, but they are an improvement by a long shot. I suggest reading them before this chapter so you will understand one part of this chapter. _

Alex stepped out of the pokemon center and into the glaring sun with a newfound feeling of joy. Although he had just lost to the Cerulean gym leader Misty he took her advice and was going to train to become strong enough to beat her in a rematch. He had healed his pokemon and asked the nurse where to find a good spot for training nearby, to which she happily told him of a park nearby dubbed "Trainer's Plaza" because many trainers go there. He had thanked her and that now puts us at where we were starting this story.

"I'm not going to lose again, so I've got to do a lot of battling!" Alex mused to himself just as he entered the large and shady park. Immediately he could see why the place was called "Trainer's Plaza", everywhere you looked there was either a battle going on or some people holding pokeballs looking for a battle. It just so happens one of them spotted Alex, who happened to be holding Zubat's pokeball, and immediately challenged him to a battle.

"Come on! One-on-one between you and me!" she hollered. All it took for Alex was a second to see she was one that wouldn't take no for an answer, and he was looking for a fight himself after all, so why not?

"Alright, bring it!" he hollered back (they were far away from each other when this girl spotted Alex).

Once they got closer to each other, though still far away enough for a makeshift 'battlefield', they tossed their pokeballs into the air. Alex had chosen Zubat, so he knew it would be released into the air, but then he noticed something airborne was also coming out of the girls pokeball. After fully materializing Alex saw the creature was in fact airborne: It had large white wings with lines tracing through it, a blue, bowling pin shaped body, two large light blue feet with similarly colored short hands, two large red eyes, and two long, droopy antennae coming from the top of it's head.

"Whoa! What's that?" Alex unknowingly said out loud.

"That is a Butterfree, I'd think you would know about them, after all they're the final evolution of Caterpie, the most common pokemon of all!" the girl said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Sorry for me not knowing! Anyways, shouldn't we be letting our pokemon fight?" Alex threw a glare at her, after seeing her be at a lost for words he smiled then continued, "Now Zubat, use Supersonic!"

"Zubat!" the bat screeched. Not wasting a second, Zubat screamed and let out confusing and ear-hurting waves. Based on it's looks, Butterfree was not very aerodynamic, so it could not fly away fast enough when it's trainer told it to from the attack. Once the waves passed Butterfree it began fluttering in all different directions and Alex grinned.

"Now hit it with Astonish!" he commanded. Zubat flew straight for Butterfree and a barely noticable dark energy surrounded it, upon contact with Butterfree the dark energy formed a bright white glow in the shape of a star, which sent Butterfree back in shock.

"Come on Butterfree! Use Confusion!" the girl ordered. Butterfree tried to do as it was told because a blue glow was forming around it, but instead it sent itself soaring into the ground by a blast from the attack.

Not wanting to give Alex a chance to say anything, the girl gave another command, "Try Tackle!" Butterfree got up and fluttered in it's confused state for a second, then rammed itself into a nearby tree. Alex couldn't believe the luck he was having! Not only was Butterfree getting hurt, it was putting on a hilarious show! The trainer could barely hold back his laughs as he told Zubat to use Astonish again.

Zubat hit Butterfree again, but this time the attack snapped the bug back to it's senses.

Once the girl saw Butterfree back under control she laughed and said, "This is perfect, now that my pokemon is not confused anymore, yours will be going down! Confusion!"

The blue glow from before highlighted the outside of Butterfree and a ripple in the air pulsed straight for Zubat. Upon contact Zubat became still but hovered in the air, and then a small blast sent Zubat soaring back and into the ground. It was way weak in comparison, but the attack reminded Alex of the Water Pulse from Staryu.

Zubat got back up without any urging from Alex, so it could still fight, but it had taken a good hit, and from where it landed there was a very small and shallow crater. Alex noted to be careful of that psychic attack.

"Were not giving up! Zubat fight back with Astonish!" Alex commanded. While the girl was stunned to see Zubat was still up Butterfree took the hit right in the face.

The girl then saw her pokemon get hurt so she snapped back into battle mode, "Attack with Confusion!" However the bug wasn't moving, it was wincing as it tried to recover from the attack.

"Perfect, it flinched! Hit it with another Astonish!" Alex said. Zubat swooped in again, this time attacking from below, and sent Butterfree stumbling backwards and onto the ground.

Butterfree did not get up, so the girl returned her pokemon and stared at Alex, who was smiling at his Zubat, "How could you have won? I attacked with super effective moves!"

"Well you only really hurt Zubat once, and Butterfree hit itself twice, and with all the attacks I did to it, I say I won just like any trainer does with any battle," Alex said, trying to sound like a wise trainer.

She was about to say something again when Zubat made a squeak. Alex turned to see his poison type glowing a bright white, he could only smile at what was happening, his Zubat was evolving!

While still glowing, Zubat's body began to widen and slightly increase in height, it's wings grew bigger too, and the two small appendages on it's bottom began to grow small feet, though they didn't appear to have toes. The white disappeared and Alex could see that the new pokemon still had the blue color to it with purple inner wings, but now it had eyes, and a very large mouth that took up most of it's body's front.

"So what are you now?" Alex asked, looking at it with his pokedex.

_Golbat, the evolved form of Zubat. Golbat hunt at night using echolocation and trap it's prey with it's large mouth, then drains blood from it's victim for food. _

"So you're a Golbat now huh? That's great! You've evolved!" Alex congratulated. Golbat smiled with it's big mouth and screeched a thank you.

Turning back to the girl he saw she was holding up a small amount of money to him and scowling, "Here, I may have lost but I'm not going to disrespect the rules, so here's your reward."

"Hang on, what?" Alex asked, looking confused.

The girl rolled her eyes at him and nastily said, "Don't you know anything? First with Butterfree, now this! When you win a battle against a trainer, they are to give you a portion of their money!"

"Huh?" Alex said, his eyebrows scrunched. He vaguely remembered Brock giving him some money for beating him, so he said, "Oh yeah! I should have remembered that!"

"Of course you should! Now let me through! I have to heal my pokemon thanks to what you did!" the girl angrily shouted at him. She then stomped past him, muttering to herself quietly.

"Nice person isn't she?" Alex said, looking at Golbat, then back to the money in his hand, "So, you have to pay in trainer matches? Better remember that from now on, or just keep winning." He smiled, then thought of all the trainers he fought, first all the rocket grunts, but they are criminals, they wouldn't give up their money, and then with Misty, she probably forgot about the money seeing Alex sad over the loss, and before he stopped thinking, Drew. He then stopped looking happy, thinking about that jerk, but he didn't care about his filthy money.

His attention snapped to a boy that didn't look much older than Alex who was walking up to him, "Hey there, I haven't seen you around here before."

Alex looked at him blankly for a second then said, "That's right, I'm from Pallet Town, I came here to train."

"Well I could kind of tell, at Trainer's Plaza there's usually the same people here everyday so you can tell who is out of town. Anyways I saw that you've met Megan... that girl who stormed off," the boy said, explaining who Megan was after seeing a blank look on Alex.

"Oh, is she like that all the time?"

"Only when she loses, but in my oppinion she's worse when she wins because she rubs it in."

"Not someone I'd like to know."

"Yeah, but since she's gone, and your pokemon still looks like it can fight, do you want to have a battle?" he asked.

"Sure, but I want to raise my other pokemon for this battle, so how about a two-on-two?" Alex suggested.

"Two is all I have anyways, oh yeah! I forgot to introduce myself! My name is Justin," the trainer said.

"My name is Alex," Alex greeted back.

"Well let's not waste any time! Get to your end!" Justin said with energy.

"Right, Golbat return," Alex replied, then returned his pokemon. He ran back to his spot from earlier and turned to see Justin had already sent out a pokemon, it was a mankey, like what Lucas had, only this one was just a little bit smaller.

"Go Charmeleon!" Alex said as he cocked back his arm and tossed the pokeball into the air. Charmeleon came out and spat fire above it's head.

"Ready?" Justin looked at Alex.

"Ready."

"Okay then! Let the battle begin! Mankey hit Charmeleon with Scratch from above!" Justin hollered. Mankey screeched and dashed several feet before jumping above Charmeleon and bringing one hand down. The fighting type moved with impressive speed and swiped it's hand across the fire type's face. Charmeleon roared in pain and awaited for Alex's command.

"Ember!" Alex said. Charmeleon bent forward and sent a wave of fireballs at the simian. Justin gave a command for it to dodge every ember, which seemed liked a hard thing to do, but showing acrobatics just as amazing as it's speed the Mankey leaped between the spaces in the embers.

"Now use Scratch again!"

"Counter that with Metal Claw!" Alex ordered. Mankey covered ground fast to reach Charmeleon and swung an arm forward from the side, as did Charmeleon, though it's claws were glowing and grew a couple inches. It didn't take much brains to foresee that the Metal Claw overpowered the weaker Scratch attack. Mankey was sent flying back several feet but got up, looking ticked off.

"Karate Chop!" Justin made a slicing motion with his hand. Mankey ran forward with a look on it's face indicating it was going to hit hard and howled angrily.

"Wait till it gets to close to dodge, then use Ember!" Alex said. Charmeleon stood it's ground and waited for Mankey to come within three feet before releasing fire, literally.

"Mankey!" the little furball of fury bleated. It fell on it's back and as before moved back on it's feet to hop angrily while shaking it's fists around.

"Eh, how about we change things up? Mankey come back," Justin said. He raised an arm to return his pokemon while the other reached into a pocket and picked out another.

"Try this! Sandshrew go!" he yelled. From his pokeball came a small, scaled, yellow pokemon that had a white underside, it stood on two legs, and had a short tail.

"You know I wasn't expecting a sudden switch like that!" Alex told him.

"After seeing how strong your Charmeleon is I knew I'd have to use this," he said with emphasis on this.

"Hm, Charmeleon, use Ember! Spread the attack out so it has no room for movement!" Alex instructed. Charmeleon nodded and scattered a flurry of fireballs in a wide range, not giving Sandshrew any movement like Alex told it to do.

"Oh no! I guess the only way out of this, is _down_! Dig Sandshrew!" Justin laughed at how he said that. Sandshrew scratched at the ground and began to dig it's way under away from the attack, the embers flew over the hole where Sandshrew used to be standing.

"Great, it can go under," Alex muttered to himself.

"Not just that! Strike from behind!" Justin ordered. Sandshrew somehow heard him from under and came out of the ground behind Charmeleon to give a powerful hit in the back. Charmeleon stumbled forward and collapsed, but got back up.

"Did you like that? Normally Sandshrew can't learn ground attacks at an early level, but I happened to give mine some TMs to give it more power!" Justin explained. Although Alex did know a little bit about TMs but nothing about Sandshrew he nodded as though he understood.

"I suppose that wasn't the only thing you taught it?"

"Yep, ooh I just remembered this one, it's much more powerful, Earthquake!" Justin yelled. First of all, this guy was nice, but it looks like when he gets into battling he gets some kind of ADHD, second of all Alex didn't even need to know that if a move is called Earthquake, it's gotta be bad.

Sandshrew, incredibly for its small size, pounded the ground and a powerful shockwave rumbled and pushed the dirt up as well as knocking Charmeleon down. Several battles nearby were disrupted by the attack, putting several sets of eyes on Alex and Justin.

"Charmeleon are you okay?" Alex asked his pokemon.

"Char," the fire type nodded as it struggled to it's feet.

"Okay..." Alex trailed off. Things weren't going so well since Sandshrew could unleash powerful attacks that would most likely finish Charmeleon off with one more hit, as well as avoid Charmeleon's attacks in the process. Alex raised his arms slightly as though backed against a wall and darted his eyes around the park while thinking in his mind what to do. An idea popped in his head that might work, or leave him with nothing.

"Charmeleon, use Flamethrower," Alex commanded hopefully. Charmeleon stood still for a moment, as though thinking hard, but eventually cocked it's head back and a ball of fire was seen churning in it's mouth, then it lurched forward and a streak of fire erupted forth and washed over Sandshrew.

"Wah! Sandshrew get out of the flames!" Justin panicked.

"Sandshrew!" whined the pokemon, though it did not move from the surrounding flames.

"Come on get out of there!"

But he didn't need to say anything more because the flames retreated slowly then stopped completely and Sandshrew stood there, very weakly but still standing.

"You had me scared there for a second!" Justin said, though Alex wasn't sure if it was to him or to Sandshrew. "Okay, let's go for another Dig!"

Sandshrew dug underground again and after a few seconds Alex said to Charmeleon, "Protect yourself with Flamethrower!" Charmeleon blasted fire at the ground near it's feet and flames now circled it at about three feet high.

The ground pushed up to Charmeleon's left and Sandshrew leapt out, completely ignorant of the flames before it was too late. The ground type flew through and screamed at the flames engulfing it, though it didn't stop as it had come through to tackle Charmeleon. It went through the flames on the other side again and sent another cry, but it somehow stayed conscious upon coming out.

"How about we put out those flames with Sand Attack so no more problems can happen?" Justin smirked. Sandshrew kicked at the dirt and sand flew out to put out the flames, which had died down a bit.

"Metal Claw!" Alex commanded as Justin watched the flames. He looked back and saw his pokemon get swiped aside by Charmeleon then get roasted by an Ember attack called out by Alex. Sandshrew staggered and swayed before collapsing to the ground.

"Aww, I thought we had you," Justin groaned.

"You almost did, but I'm not gonna let that happen!" Alex laughed.

Justin sent out his Mankey, "Let's just see how you can take Mankey on! Karate Chop!"

Alex thought about switching for Shellder, but decided he's going to let his pokemon fight till their out. "Dodge then use Flamethrower!"

"Charmeleon!" the reptile roared, then showered Mankey in flames. Mankey yelled in fury and to both Alex and Charmeleon's surprise jumped through the fire with one hand poised into position for a karate chop.

"Get out of the way!" Alex yelled. Charmeleon moved to the right just before Mankey would have conked it on the head. Mankey slammed it's hand into the ground instead and breathed heavily in exhaustion, Charmeleon was heaving too. Alex had to finish it now or never with Charmeleon.

"Okay, take it down with Ember!"

"Char!" the fire type yelled as it bent forward to deliver a blow to Mankey with blistering fireballs. Mankey raised it's hands in defense, but could not stop the attack completely and fell.

Justin stood there registering what just happened so fast and said nothing as he returned his pokemon.

He walked up to Alex as he reached into a pocket for some money and finally spoke, "Wow, you beat both my pokemon with only one of yours, and it had taken some serious hits. I think you deserve this," he handed Alex the money.

"Thanks, I guess it all came down to the training my pokemon had though, but your pokemon were good too! I wouldn't think something small like that Sandshrew would be able to use a move as powerful as Earthquake! You've got to give yourself credit too."

Justin smiled, "Thanks, but anyways, here's your money," he handed Alex the bills, "and now I have to get to the pokemon center."

"Yeah, I have to get there too, no way I'll be able to battle with Charmeleon like that too soon!" Alex remarked. Both trainers, who quickly became newfound friends, turned for the exit of the park as they talked about their pokemon.

"Well, I haven't had my pokemon for long, but I plan to enter the Pokemon League with them," Justin said.

"That's what I plan to do too! So far I have only one badge but I'm training to get my second one at the Cerulean Gym," Alex replied.

"I don't have any badges, but I plan on battling the Cerulean Gym too, maybe tomorrow."

"Good luck if you do fight tomorrow," Alex told him. Justin was about to thank him when some man ran up to them. He had brown hair, which was cut short, like a buzz-cut almost, and dressed comfortably in a blue T-shirt and jeans, he looked to be in his twenties.

"Hey, I saw your match just now! You are pretty good for someone your age, and I'd like to see how you do in a full battle," he said, holding up a pokeball to show he made a challenge.

"You mean with six pokemon? Sorry but I only have three on me," Alex apologized.

The man scrunched his eyebrows in disbelief. "You're kidding me, right? Trainers should have a full team if they're going to battle."

"Well I don't happen to have a full team because I'm only a new trainer," Alex explained.

The man thought for a moment, then looked back at Alex, "Would a three-on-three battle be good then?"

Alex looked at Justin, who gave a look that said 'well?', then at his belt holster, and finally back at the man, "Well I guess I could go for one more battle before healing, Justin you can go ahead."

"Alright, but I don't think I'll be coming back, I'm going to catch some more pokemon now that he brought that point up," he nodded towards the man.

"Great!" the man said, "The name's Dan by the way."

"Alex," Alex introduced, shaking Dan's hand.

"Well I'll see you then, I hope at the Indigo League!" Justin bade goodbye to Alex.

"Yeah, see you!" Alex held his hand up as a goodbye. Justin turned halfway and left through the opening and strolled down the sidewalk.

"So, the same field as before with that dude?" Dan asked.

"Sure," Alex agreed. The two walked back to the familiar 'battlefield' except this time the only difference was Alex took a different side on the end that was farther away from the park entrance.

"Okay then, I'll go first, Tentacool go!" Dan tossed a pokeball out. The pokemon inside had a blue body in the shape of a bell with two ruby colored bulges on the top side of it's head at the sides with one much smaller bulge in the center, two beady eyes near the bottom front of the body, and two wiry brown tentacles extending from underneath it to hold it up on the ground.

Alex checked his pokedex to see what it was and read that it was a dual water and poison type, but the only attacks this one knew were Bubble and Poison Sting, so it can't do to much damage, though that's just from one hit alone.

Alex said under his breath, "Charmeleon has taken too many hits, so it needs a break, and it's weak to water types, so that leaves me with two options. I want to save Shellder in case I need a fresh pokemon badly, so my only choice is Golbat."

"You ready?" Dan asked behind his pokemon.

"Yeah, just thinking things over, but I think I've got my choice made. Golbat go!" Alex said.

"Well then, if we are ready I'll take first move," Dan said once Golbat materialized, "Bubble!"

"Tent!" growled the jellyfish. From where it's mouth might be came a small cloud of light blue bubbles that immediately dispersed and went after Golbat.

"Dodge the bubbles!" Alex said while holding back a chuckle because of the silly way that sounded. Golbat flapped it's wings and rose above the oncoming bubbles, then looked down to Alex for a command.

"Uh let's see, does it know any new moves?" Alex asked himself. "Well some of those Zubat I fought in Mt. Moon could use things like Wing Attack and Bite, so maybe it knows those too."

Alex looked up and called to Golbat, "Dive in and use Wing Attack!"

"Golbat!" the poison pokemon screeched as it tucked in it's wings and dropped like a stone. When it came several feet above Tentacool it spread it's wings out and they began to glow a white color. Golbat swooped down and picked up a hurt looking Tentacool on it's wing, Tentacool struggled to get off, but the force of Golbat's speed kept the jellyfish on it's wing.

"Use Bubble to get off!" Dan hollered. It didn't look like Tentacool attacked until Golbat wavered in it's flight then spiraled out of control and crashlanded after Tentacool pushed away from danger.

Alex's mouth stood agape, "Uhh..." then his senses came back, "Wait get back up Golbat! Use Bite!"

"Gol... bat" the pokemon grunted as it tried pushing itself back up with it's wings. After finally getting back up to it's stubby feet Golbat took to the air and flew after Tentacool, who couldn't move well on land, with an intent to bite.

"Bubble!" Dan simply commanded. Tentacool attacked Golbat again, and this time it had nowhere to go.

"Golbat keep pressing forward!" Alex urged on. Golbat grunted as the bubbles hit it, but pressed on towards it's target.

Since Tentacool kept sending bubbles out it couldn't see directly in front of it so when Golbat came up to attack it had no time to dodge or prepare in any other way. Tentacool screamed in pain as it struggled out of Golbat's tight grip of it's mouth, but Golbat stayed strong 'til the last second.

"Use your tentacles and push away from Golbat!" Dan shouted like a coach. Tentacool placed it's tentacles on the sides of Golbat's body and gave a mighty push that unlatched it from the poison type's jaws.

"Now hit it with Bubble!" Dan said.

As Tentacool reeled back to release the foamy attack Alex said, "Stop it short with Astonish!" Golbat didn't take long in connecting with Tentacool since they weren't far away, and the small flash of the attack made Tentacool jump back. After this Dan stayed quiet for a long time, which Alex was going to take advantage of but then he saw that there was a certain look on his face as if he was contemplating over a tough decision.

"What could he be doing?" Alex pondered. Dan then shook his head as if denying this 'decision' then pressed on with a call for Bubble.

"We won't let this happen! Wing Attack and swerve around the bubbles!" Golbat flew into action with incredible steering around the many frothy projectiles and gave one fell swoop across the side of Tentacool. Tentacool fell back and did not get up.

"You're good with your aerial tactics, but I'll even the field with Pidgeotto!" Dan hollered. What came out looked a lot like a larger version of a Pidgey, but the top of it's head had pulled back, salmon colored feathers, which was about the only noticable difference Alex could see right now.

"Ready?" Dan asked.

"Yep." Alex said as he tucked away his pokedex.

"Then let's go with our Wing Attack!"

"Dodge that by going above!" Alex rapidly commanded. Golbat zoomed far above everyone and stayed there after Pidgeotto finished it's failed attack.

"Did you forget I'm using a flying type too? Take to the skies Pidgeotto!" Dan said. Pidgeotto began flapping it's way up to Golbat's position.

"Get away Golbat!" Alex hollered, making a shoving motion in case it couldn't hear him. Golbat got the message though and glided away towards Dan's end of the field.

"Pidgeotto! Attack with Gust!" Dan said. Pidgeotto flapped it's wings madly and a powerful blast of wind erupted to hit Golbat and knock it out of the air. Golbat spiraled uncontrollably in what was going to be a crash landing if Alex didn't do something fast.

"Use Astonish at the ground if you can to force against the crash!" Alex directed. Golbat incredibly mustered the control to bring out the faint gray energy of Astonish and gave a brave thrust at the ground. The energy cracked and burst into light in the split second before hitting the ground, which saved Golbat from defeat.

Alex wiped his brow in relief. "Good job, now attack with Wing Attack!" Golbat regained it's balance on the ground before spreading it's leathery wings and shooting right for Pidgeotto, to which Dan challenged with it's Wing Attack.

"Uh oh," Alex whispered. Pidgeotto was larger, so unless Golbat had a lot of power packed behind it then it was most likely going to lose in the collision.

The two flying pokemon shot at each other and connected above the center of the field, and at that moment time seemed to have slowed down. Golbat and Pidgeotto had connected wing to heads with each other, but the connection broke as Golbat dropped like a rock to the soft grass.

"Okay, Golbat return, you did your best," Alex said as he saw Golbat wasn't moving.

"So which pokemon are you going to use now? Your Charmeleon, or a new one I haven't seen yet?" Dan asked with interest.

"You'll see, Shellder go!" Alex called out. Shellder popped up and squeaked it's name.

"Alright then, if that little thing is what I have to face now then I'll go with Wing Attack!" Dan taunted.

Alex thought for a second then said, "Aim directly at Pidgeotto and use Icicle Spear!"

"Shellder!" the water type squeaked again, then shot an icicle like an arrow directly towards Pidgeotto's head, which was followed by several more. The icicles shattered when they hit Pidgeotto and sent it shrieking and flapping around uncontrollably. Pidgeotto smacked the roots of a tree by Shellder's side with it's face after the last icicle sent it off course.

"Come on! Get back up!" Dan encouraged.

Before Pidgeotto could move Alex was on it, "Shellder stop it with Water Gun!" Shellder sprayed Pidgeotto and it started rolling across the ground until Shellder had to catch it's breath. After that there layed a soaked and defeated flying type.

"Aww, I was hoping to push your pokemon harder, I want to see a battle when the pokemon is fighting beyond it's limits! That's when it's exciting!" Dan exclaimed, then continued, "You know, I was thinking about whether I should use this pokemon or not, I mean, to challenge your pokemon, and at first I decided no, but now I see that I have to! I'll admit I might be raising this one more than the others, but it's such a powerhouse, at least in my oppinion, that it needs all the training it can get."

He tossed a different kind of pokeball out, it had the same white bottom, but on top it was black with yellow stripes, an Ultra Ball, Alex recognized from a telivision ad. The pokemon that materialized from it was something he had never seen before, it stood on two long, lanky legs with round three clawed feet, a body shaped like a torso but with no neck or head, two small eyes at the top of the body, and two regular length arms, (compared to the legs) which ended with hands containing three fingers. The body, hands and feet were brown, but the legs were a cream color and had the appearance of coils.

"I'd like you to meet Hitmonlee!" Dan introduced. At the sound of it's name Hitmonlee jumped in the air and made a threatening looking kick with one leg, which seemed to extend like a spring then coil back to it's original length.

Alex checked his pokedex to see what was up with this pokemon:

_Hitmonlee, the kicking pokemon, Hitmonlee have extremely flexible legs that are able to extend to great distances and deliver a powerful kick._

"That's definitely something different. I don't think Shellder should fight this match," Alex said, "It can't move and that thing could possibly hit it from that distance with it's foot. Charmeleon is weak but it's had rest, so it should be able to damage it some and then maybe Shellder can finish it." He raised his pokeball, "Return Shellder!"

The beam sucked up the water type and Alex then switched out with another pokeball, "Charmeleon you're up!"

Charmeleon popped out and looked weary, it did have some rest but compared to Hitmonlee it looked pathetic.

"I don't know what to say about that decision, Charmeleon is weak but Shellder probably would have gotten swept, so it doesn't matter either way, this match is as good as over!" Dan remarked. "Hitmonlee use Mega Kick!"

Hitmonlee began running towards Charmeleon, which wasn't hard for it, and it's left foot glowed a bright blue color. It then followed up by swinging that foot forward with such speed Charmeleon didn't have a chance to do anything but grimace as the foot bashed it's chin. Charmeleon fell backwards but fortunately stood up.

"Don't give it an opening, Flamethrower!" Alex commanded. He wasn't going to let something that dangerous be able to hit his pokemon again.

"Charmeleon!" the fire type roared as it sent a shower of flames towards the fighting type.

"Get back!" Dan ordered. Hitmonlee jumped backwards to get out of range from the attack.

"Chase after it and keep using Flamethrower!"

Charmeleon ran towards Hitmonlee and sent bursts of flames at it, but with each burst Hitmonlee jumped back out of harm's way.

Alex saw an opportunity though, "Chase it to the trees! Don't give it any space to jump away!"

Charmeleon understood and began going after Hitmonlee from a new angle, one that would trap it. Dan looked worried for a second before smirking evilly, Alex gave a suspicious glance at this.

Once Hitmonlee was almost backed to a tree Dan made his move, "Leap off that tree behind you and use Hi Jump Kick!"

"Lee!" the pokemon gave a nod before jumping back to the side of the maple tree and leaping up high into the air. Everybody looked up at it but only Dan was smiling. Hitmonlee raised a leg to a painful looking height and gave one powerful swing downwards. The heel of the foot smashed into Charmeleon's head from behind and the reptile collided with the same tree Hitmonlee had bounced off of.

"Char... meel..." grunted the pokemon, before it slumped to the ground unconsiously.

"Return... Charmeleon." Alex's eyes were wide with shock at how insanely strong Hitmonlee was. Sure Charmeleon had battled harshly earlier, but still, Hitmonlee delivered two blows and sent Charmeleon crashing down.

"Shellder, go!" Alex said reluctantly. Shellder came out facing Hitmonlee with a challenging glare.

"Let's go first! Water Gun!" he ordered. Shellder shot at Hitmonlee but the fighting type leapt with precision to avoid being hit. Another Mega Kick was commanded and Hitmonlee went up again to Alex's end of the field.

"Water Gun!"

Shellder sprayed Hitmonlee head on but the attack seemed to be doing nothing, the water spurted off to the sides while Hitmonlee charged through.

"Hitmon," the fighting type said as it prepared to launch, "Lee!"

"Shellder!" cried the bivalve when it was picked up by the force of the attack. Shellder flew behind Alex and groaned, but when Alex walked over and picked it up it still wanted to fight.

"Okay then," Alex sighed. He put Shellder down back on the field and proceeded back to his spot.

"Hey! You can't just do that!" Dan hollered.

"This isn't some official pokemon match so calm down! Besides I thought you wanted to fight me, not have me lose by default!" Alex challenged.

"Oh, right," Dan calmed down. "Finish it with Jump Kick!" Hitmonlee bent down then soared up in the air and dropped down in Shellder's direction with a foot stuck out. Alex gaped at the fighting type, which became a black outline with the harsh rays of the sun behind it in the air, but snapped out of it when a hopeful thought came to him.

"Try knocking it down with Icicle Spear!"

Shellder hastily fired icicles at the oncoming kicker, but to their dismay the icicles stood no chance to the power of the Jump Kick.

Shellder screamed when Hitmonlee slammed it's foot on top of it and Alex heard a sickening crunching sound. Now he didn't care if Shellder could fight any longer, and when he looked he saw that it couldn't anyways. Dan was right, Shellder was swept.

"Return," Alex muttered.

"You know, I was hoping for a better match, sure Tentacool and Pidgeotto were in good matches but I hoped you would be able to fight back against Hitmonlee," Dan said as he returned Hitmonlee.

"Well, I'm sorry I didn't live up to your expectations, but here's your money," Alex said sourly. He gave Dan a very thin stack of bills which he accepted happily.

"Alright then, I'll get going, and maybe if we meet again you can put a few bruises on Hitmonlee," Dan said, then added, "Or maybe you'll have a full team too!"

Alex felt a surge of anger pulse over him and so he left before he could do anything violent or stupid.

After leaving the park finally he stopped on the sidewalk to check up on his Shellder.

"Are you okay?" he asked when Shellder came out. He looked over and gasped as he saw that on the top shell there was a crack, it traced all the way from the front to the back, it wasn't too deep but it was something to be concerned about.

"Oooh, we better have Nurse Joy check that out," he said with concern. Shellder wheezed in pain. Alex returned the pokemon and hurried to the pokemon center in the hopes that Nurse Joy could somehow fix the shell, he didn't want his pokemon to bear a nasty crack like that.

He ran all the way back and did not stop until he reached the desk, fortunately nobody was there but the nurse behind the counter.

Alex panted for a bit before speaking, "Nurse Joy... I need you to heal my pokemon..."

"I'll gladly help," she said with a smile, though she was curious about why he came in a rush.

"Thanks, but I need you to especially see this one," he said after gaining his breath back.

"Oh, let me take a look," she said. Alex let Shellder out on the desk, and Nurse Joy made a similar gasp to Alex's when she saw the crack. "How did this happen?"

"I was at Trainer's Plaza when a trainer asked for a battle, he seemed to be like an opponent I could handle until he sent out this pokemon called Hitmonlee. I underestimated it's strength and it made that crack in the shell with a move called Mega Kick."

Nurse Joy suddenly got red in the face with anger, "This is the fourth case I've heard of an incident with a Hitmonlee today!"

"Really? Today?"

"Yes, someone is obviously being careless with their pokemon's strength! First there was the Pidgey with the bent wing, then the Pikachu with the damaged leg, and just two hours ago there was a Koffing with an injury so bad it still hasn't woken up after being healed! If that trainer comes in here I will give him a serious straightening out! I'm fine with pokemon battles because usually your pokemon can be healed like that," she snapped her fingers, "but when you let your pokemon seriously damage a much less powerful one that's just wrong!"

Alex gave a worried look, "Will you be able to do something about it?"

The nurse looked embarrased, "Oh yes! I'm sorry for losing my temper, I can definitely fix it up a bit, but there might be a small scratch left over."

"A small scratch is fine, but I'm still upset about that Hitmonlee."

"I am too, but don't worry about that now, did you say you had other pokemon for me to heal?"

Alex blurted, "Oh yeah! Here." He handed the nurse the pokeballs.

"Okay," she resumed her usual cheery composure, "you may as well go sit down somewhere, this will be a while."

"Okay, let me know when they're better," he nodded at the pokeballs. She picked up the pokeballs and went through a door into the healing rooms.

"Hm," Alex muttered to himself. He decided to go to a video phone to make a call, he had something important to do.

He typed in some numbers on a keypad of what looked like an ATM machine, but was actually a machine used for making calls to other people with these kind of devices. Soon the screen popped up Prof. Oak's face, who gave a cheerful smile.

"Hello Alex! It's nice to see you! How is your pokedex coming along?"

"It's going great proffesor! I've got some interesting pokemon recorded on it, but that's not why I called, I have something to ask."

"Oh, well let me hear what you have to say."

"I want to know something about catching pokemon."

"What seems to be the problem?"

"Well, I battled a trainer earlier and he wanted a full battle, but I told him I only had three pokemon, and he gave me a look of surprise. I want to know, should I have a full team of pokemon by now?"

"I understand since your a beginning trainer you wouldn't have much pokemon but usually, a trainer will have more than six pokemon."

"How? I thought you can only hold six of them at a time."

"Most trainers go to special places, ranches, I guess you could call them, where if they catch more than six pokemon the extras are automatically sent to there. In fact, my lab is one of these special places!"

"Really?"

"Oh yes! All of the trainers that receive pokemon from me automatically have extras sent over here."

"Hm."

"What is it?"

"Well, when I started this journey I only wanted a select team of six that I could focus all of my training on, but now that it seems many trainers catch more than six, I'll have to spend more time on so many pokemon. This might become a problem for the Indigo League."

"If you do catch many pokemon you will of course have to raise them yourself but you can also have them raised at my lab!"

"I thought you did research on the pokemon there, not train them."

"I do research, but if trainers request there pokemon to be raised while here I have an assisstant handle their pokemon, and I do some helping from time to time."

"But I've had my mind focused on making one team, now I don't know what to catch!"

"You don't have to catch every new pokemon you see, just pick the ones that feel right to you."

"Feel right to me?"

"Trainers don't always pick pokemon because they like the way it looks or for something similar, they also pick ones that they feel they can be friends with."

"How will I know when I get this 'feeling'."

"You already have."

"What?"

"When you chose Charmander from my lab, you picked it because you felt a bond between you and it. I guess you could say, you picked it because you were similar in a way."

"Hold on professor! I understand all that your saying but this is kind of hard to take in all at once, I get this feeling your saying pokemon and people befriend eachother because they have personalities that go together."

Oak's face beamed, "That's exactly what I'm trying to tell you! So you see, you can pick more than six, but get the ones that are alike with you."

Alex stayed silent for a while, then a ringing sound came from behind, signaling his pokemon were healed, so he had to go. "Alright, I'll get some more tomorrow, and thanks for giving me the advice."

"Any time! Now it's getting late, so I think you should get some rest."

"Right," Alex simply said, and he turned off the machine to get his pokemon. He walked back to the counter and saw Nurse Joy with a pokemon at her side. It was round and pink, in an egg shape, with little frills at the sides of it's head, short stubby arms and feet, and an egg was nestled in a pouch on it's stomach.

"What's that pokemon?" Alex asked.

"This is a Chansey, they're usually at pokemon centers because they help as nurses. It has your pokemon," the nurse said, pointing to a tray in the Chansey's hands. Alex looked at the tray and saw two pokeballs on it.

"Uh, what happened to the third pokeball?" he asked.

"Right now your Shellder is still being treated, this crack was more bad then we thought, but fortunately the shell is part of the body, so along with our medical help it will mend, but like I said it may have a scratch remaining when done. It's also going to take longer than we thought to fix it, so you'll have to wait for tomorrow, if you're not already staying at somewhere else there is an open room for you to stay the night in." she explained, then pointed a hand and looked to a door with a picture of a bed on it.

"Thanks, I didn't think about it, but I didn't have any place to sleep for tonight! I'll go take a room then," Alex said appreciatively.

"No problem! And by tomorrow morning your Shellder will be all better!" she smiled. Alex said good night and went to take a room. He looked at all the doors and found one that had a **vacant **card on it's handle, took it off, then opened it up. Inside he found a small room with one cot that had one blue blanket pulled over the top. Besides that there wasn't much else except a small one person table and chair.

"Oh this looks comfortable," Alex said sarcastically, but was still grateful that he had someplace close to Shellder. He was worried about it, but he knew that with Nurse Joy helping it, Shellder would be all right.

_So, pretty big chapter eh? I think this is the biggest one I've ever done, so I'm patting myself on the back. And I also think that phone call turned pretty philisophical in my oppinion. I hope you enjoyed this update!_


	16. Recruiting

Alex woke up on the rickety cot with the sun pouring into the room. He stretched for several minutes since his sleeping arrangements were not the most comfortable and yawned before thinking what to do. His mind was in a fog but it cleared after he felt his head and noticed his hair was messy.

"Guess I better take a shower, I hope they have one here," he said to himself. The first thing he did was walk out and check for a place to shower, he checked the bathroom just in case and saw there was a connected area with three shower stalls. He gave a look of relief and headed back to his room for a change of clothes.

"Alright," he began as he set his clothes to the side and picked himself a towel off the bathroom rack, "this looks good enough."

So he took his shower and came out several minutes later all clean and shivering.

_Note to self, pokemon centers have very bad showers _he thought as he dried himself off with his towel. The knob was hard to understand and when he did figure it out all he could get was cold water. He sighed it off after getting dressed and pulled on a smile for when he would get Shellder back.

Shellder had been in the care of Nurse Joy overnight due to a powerful attack by a trainer's Hitmonlee, a fighting type well known for it's kicking prowess.

Alex strolled down the hallway and turned right to the counter where a Nurse Joy, (possibly from last night) stood waiting for a trainer with injured pokemon. She turned when Alex walked in and gave the trademark smile.

"Good morning! It's good to see you ready for the day, your Shellder is doing fine, I would keep it out of battling for a day or two though," she told him.

"That's alright, thanks for healing him too, is it okay for me to have him back?" Alex asked.

"Of course! I'll be right back," she said as she went back through the doors behind the counter. Alex stood there gently tapping his fingers on the countertop and looking up at the ceiling. The doors to the entrance of the center automatically slid open and Alex turned to see who was walking in. He saw that it was Derek.

"Hey Derek! Surprise seeing you at this center!" Alex greeted.

"Hi Alex! This was the closest center to the gym so it was common sense to go here," Derek said.

"So, you challenged the gym?"

"Yep, Misty, the gym leader, opens her gym early, I went for a look and found out I was the first match of the day! And I won too!"

"I battled her yesterday, but I lost, so after healing I went training at a park, but I had to come back here because my Shellder got a serious injury. I had to stay overnight and now the nurse is going to get him."

As if hearing her name as a cue Nurse Joy walked in with a pokeball, "Okay, here is your Shellder."

Alex took the pokeball, "Thanks again, I'm really glad that it's all better!"

"Any time!" she said, then saw Derek, "Do you need any help?"

"Yes please, I have some pokemon that need healing," Derek said, handing her two pokeballs.

"Okay, I'll take care of them right away!" and with that the nurse went back to heal the pokemon.

Derek and Alex sat down at a table and started catching up with each other. "So how have you been doing since we split up?" Alex asked.

"It's been alright, but getting through Mt. Moon was a little slow, it was like a maze in there, did you think that?" Derek replied.

"Yeah, but I made a lot of good guesses. Say, have you caught any pokemon after Pewter City?" Alex asked, wanting to see how much he has collected.

"Two actually, one was an Onix, like the one Brock had, and the other one is a little ground type called Diglett," he told Alex. To show him what it was Derek popped a pokeball out and released the contents. The pokemon called Diglett didn't have much detail to it, it was a small brown dome shape that was surrounded by dirt and barely bigger than the size of a pokeball. It's face had two upward oval shaped eyes and a round pink nose, but no mouth.

"Oh wow, where did you find that?"

"It was tunneling along the ground sometime while I was in there, I wanted to catch some other pokemon too, but all I could find were some non-interesting pokemon like Geodude and Zubat."

Alex held back something to defend his Golbat and switched it with a different sentence, "Oh, did you happen to find any pokemon called Paras?"

"Nope, why? Are they rare or cool looking or something?"

"Well, I don't really know, I was going to catch one but they were scared off, but I did find out that they can heal others with spores they make on these mushrooms on their back."

Derek gave a look of confusion, so Alex showed him a picture of one on his pokedex.

"Ohhh, okay, so did you catch anything?"

"Actually, I did catch a Zubat!" Alex laughed, "But they aren't that bad actually, you just need to train them a bit, then they get pretty good at battling. Mine evolved, so it's even better." Alex brought Golbat out and Derek looked impressed.

"I wouldn't want that thing biting me!" he said truthfully.

"Same here, but biting is actually what I'm going to need it to do for my rematch with Misty," Alex told Derek.

"Why so?"

"Misty's Starmie is a water and psychic type, however it does not know any psychic moves that could hurt Golbat, but Golbat does know a dark type move, a.k.a. Bite." Alex explained.

"That sounds pretty good, but who else would you use?" Derek asked.

"Last time it was Shellder and Zubat, but Shellder can't battle for a while, and Charmeleon doesn't do good against water types, so I'm heading north to catch some other pokemon, and hopefully one will be able to get me the win for the badge!" Alex said.

"That's good thinking, I hope you win, right now I think I need to get my pokemon back," Derek said as he saw the nurse come back. Alex said goodbye and left the pokemon center.

"Okay, if north is that way," Alex looked in a direction, "then I'll have a lot of walking to do so I can get to a new route."

He walked along the roads for a little over an hour, taking quick stops to replenish supplies, and decided he may as well have a pokemon out for some companionship while he walked. Taking a second he picked his starter Charmeleon.

"Come on out," Alex said while opening the pokeball in his hand. Charmeleon gave a look around thinking it was in a battle, but Alex explained it's reason for being sent out.

"Char," it replied coolly. Alex walked side by side with his partner on the sidewalk and looked at the tall buildings while moving along. Charmeleon looked happy to be out of it's pokeball for a reason besides battling or taking a food break, so Alex made a note to let the pokemon out more often.

Another hour flew by and before they knew it they were only several blocks from the northern route.

"We're almost there, we can take a break once we exit the city," Alex told his pokemon. Charmeleon rubbed it's tired legs to indicate he was looking forward to it. Alex chuckled and pushed on, Charmeleon behind by several paces.

A dozen minutes later they had reached the end of the city limits where an open dirt road stretched half a mile and stopped at a bridge.

"Alright, we need to cross that bridge, but like I promised we can take a break," Alex told Charmeleon. They sat down in the soft grass at the side and stretched their legs out. Alex thought of what pokemon he might find out beyond that bridge, hopefully a grass or an electric type, but more likely a grass, either way he hoped for one. A couple more minutes and they got up to move again, gazing at the river beneath the upcoming bridge.

"Hey, I know we already have Shellder as a water pokemon, but why don't we catch another? There might be a situation where we need a more mobile water type," Alex suggested to Charmeleon. The reptile shrugged, saying it didn't care, though it wasn't excited at the thought of battling a water type.

Alex stared for a second, thinking, "I'm going to take that as a yes, and don't worry, I won't let a water type hurt you." Charmeleon looked at Alex, but reluctantly nodded. "Great!"

They moved forward to the beginning of the bridge, but stayed on the natural ground by the riverside and Alex got out his fishing rod. He cast it gently into the current and let it sit there, preparing a pokeball for when he found something.

The line bobbed and Alex pulled back slowly to surface the creature, it wasn't tugging hard. With one last sudden, harsh tug of the rod Alex sent the water type pokemon in the air and turned it into a black outline against the sun. The pokemon fell down behind Alex with a thud to the head and got up dizzily, it had also let go of the lure when it fell.

Now that it was out of the sun's glare Alex saw that it was a round pokemon with two short round feet, a white belly with a black swirl pattern, round pink lips and two large, innocent looking eyes.

Alex pulled out his pokedex:

_Poliwag, the Tadpole Pokemon, it's newly grown legs prevent it from walking well, so it prefers swimming more than walking._

"Well, the pokedex says it doesn't walk well, but at least it is able to move more easily than Shellder," Alex noted. "Okay Charmeleon, we'll just use your faster movements as an advantage, so let's start with Metal Claw!"

"Char!" the fire type roared. Poliwag was heading back to the river and didn't see Charmeleon come in to swipe it. The Poliwag actually bounced on the ground from the attack rather than roll away.

"Poli... Wag!" the water type inhaled air and puffed up, then released a torrent of bubbles.

"Dodge that!" Alex yelled to his pokemon. He wasn't expecting that powerful looking of an attack, it looked to be like a very powerful Bubble, or something else possibly.

Charmeleon jumped and slid on the grass to avoid the attack from hitting and got up with stains all over it's belly.

"Don't give it an opening! Flamethrower!" Alex shouted. Charmeleon washed Poliwag over in flames. Nothing else happened for a while until Alex noticed something funny going on with the flamethrower. There was a lot of steam emitting from where Poliwag was.

"What's going on?" Alex thought out loud. Next thing that happened was the flamethrower getting shorter and shorter as a blast of water was getting longer and longer. Poliwag was using Water Gun to douse the flames.

"Run to the side Charmeleon!" Alex shouted. Charmeleon stopped it's attack and ran just before the Water Gun could spray it. Alex then called for another Metal Claw and Poliwag could not stop it's attack in time to get away. The tadpole bounced away on it's side again from the attack. Still it got back up, it had taken some fair damage, though it was hit by not very effective attacks. It wasn't even breathing heavily.

Alex thought for a minute, then an idea popped up, "Run at it with one more Metal Claw!"

Charmeleon ran after Poliwag with it's left claw out sideways and glowing a bright silvery color. As it went after Poliwag Alex pulled out a Great Ball he had bought during a quick stop for supplies.

"Just a little bit more," he whispered. Charmeleon then slashed across the front of Poliwag and Alex tossed the ball at it while it was unable to struggle when inside. The ball sucked Poliwag in and shook without breaking thanks to Alex's plan. With Poliwag captured right after being hit it wouldn't be able to try and break free until it might be too late.

The ball chimed and Alex picked it up. "Good job Charmeleon, without you we couldn't have made that plan work." Charmeleon grinned at hearing it being praised.

"Now on to find more pokemon!" Alex declared. Charmeleon cheered in agreement and they moved onto the bridge. Not many people were on the bridge, just two trainers battling a Geodude and Mankey, and a girl who might also be a trainer that was watching them. Alex slipped by so he could avoid the possible request of a challenge.

The bridge was a short trip and they made it across within five minutes at their casual pace and back on to ground, where hopefully new pokemon will be found.

"Keep your eyes out for anything," Alex said to Charmeleon, scanning the tree filled area. It wasn't yet a forest or a woods, but there was plenty of trees around for a pokemon to be hiding in.

Alex was about to ask his pokemon if it had seen anything when it pointed a claw in a direction and started getting excited.

"What is it?" Alex said, looking where his pokemon directed. He kept searching and thought Charmeleon was crazy when he saw what it was talking about. The pokemon was hard to see, it's body looked like a wiry brown vine, with leaves for hands and a yellow bell shaped head, it blended in well with it's surroundings.

Alex checked it on his pokedex, "Bellsprout, blah blah blah, uses it's body for dodging, yadah yadah, oh! It's a grass type the dex says, just what we need!"

Alex gave a command for a Flamethrower and Charmeleon shot one at the Bellsprout, but to their surprise it bended it's thin body around the fire and completely avoided getting hurt.

"What? Try again!" Alex said dumbfounded. Charmeleon was surprised too but snapped back into it's senses and tried roasting it again. The Bellsprout did like before and bended around the flames, except this time it started running in a funny fashion in case Charmeleon decided to move the flames.

Alex pinched the bridge of his nose and thought hard on how to hit it, then decided for a simple straightforward plan.

"Spread out your range and use Ember!"

"Char!" Charmeleon roared with anger as it spread out a wide range of fireballs that there was no way Bellsprout could dodge. Alex thought the plan would fail at first since Bellsprout was waving it's body around the fireballs but eventually it made a mistake and moved it's head into a close group of flames and fell back in pain.

"Okay, we can't be wasting much time so let's go right for the catch!" Alex declared, and tossed a pokeball at Bellsprout. Astonishingly the sprout got back up and curved around the ball, in anger and frustration Alex tossed more pokeballs at it but it kept dodging around them. After all the pokeballs ceased because Alex threw them all Bellsprout laughed and ran off into the bushes behind it.

Alex walked over and picked up his pokeballs to put back, then after finishing he turned to Charmeleon, "We are not stopping, we need that grass type to beat Misty and I will chase that thing down!" Charmeleon stared in awe at it's trainer's determination and followed him into the bushes.

They searched around more carefully knowing how well Bellsprout can hide in plain sight when a noise made both of them jump.

"What was that?" Alex said, looking around, hoping it was Bellsprout. The noise came again from above and Alex looked up to see something on a tree branch. It had a brown body, large shoulders, and a yellow head, limbs, and tail. It's eyes were closed yet it was looking directly at Alex and looked to be smiling. The trainer checked his pokedex and found out it was called an Abra.

"Hey, a psychic type, we're looking for something else but, we could always have one!" Alex said to Charmeleon. But before he could even give a command the Abra dissapeared in the blink of an eye.

Alex looked around frantically, "Where'd it go? Why does everything run away from me here?"

Charmeleon sighed and tugged at his shirt, urging him to just move on. Alex calmed down and took a minute to recollect himself.

"You're right... but it would still be cool to have a psychic type." Charmeleon looked Alex hard in the eye. "Okay okay! We'll keep looking for Bellsprout!"

So they moved on, Alex still secretly keeping a look out for Abra. They covered lots of ground, not overlooking one inch of space in case Bellsprout would be right there. Alex did think he saw a flash behind him every couple of minutes or so, but he brushed it off, thinking his hopes for Abra were getting to his head.

Not much progress was going on with the Bellsprout hunt, so Alex and Charmeleon decided to take a lunch break. Alex sat down and sent out his pokemon, including the new member Poliwag. Everyone looked happy to be out, except Poliwag, who was probably still angry for being disturbed.

"Okay guys, we're going to have lunch out here, and before I forget, I'd like everyone to say hello to our new friend Poliwag!" Alex said to his team. All the pokemon turned to the tadpole, who, at seeing all eyes on it, dropped the pouty look and returned their hellos nicely yet nervously.

"I know I've been wanting to get us on our way to beat Misty but I decided we need some new pokemon to freshen up our team, but now we are taking a rest," Alex explained to them. He then let them talk amongst each other while he prepared the food.

Alex handed Charmeleon it's bowl first since it had worked all morning, then Golbat, and next Shellder, but after handing the bowl to it he looked at the top shell. It did have a scratch like the nurse said but it wasn't that noticable, it even looked a little cool, it showed that Shellder was tough. He moved on then to Poliwag. Once everyone turned their attention to their food it had taken on the upset look but when it saw Alex hand it food it looked thankful and softened up.

"Welcome to the team Poliwag!" Alex said to it before going to prepare his lunch. He fixed himself a simple peanut butter sandwich, no jelly, as he liked it, and sat with his team and watched them talk to each other. What he wouldn't give to understand them.

After staying silent for a long time, Alex talked to Shellder, who was eating it's food in peace, "Hey Shellder, how are you doing?"

"Shellder!" the water type squeaked happily. Alex smiled, seeing his pokemon was coping well.

"Sorry, but I can't let you battle in the rematch, but you'll battle in another gym sometime," Alex promised. Shellder nodded as best as it could with it's body shape in understanding. The trainer proceeded to do some more small chat with the other members then once they finished eating he returned every one of them but Charmeleon. After that it was back to the Bellsprout hunt.

The search took them through a more wooded area, which meant an even harder look for the grass type.

"Do you see anything? You have the better senses," Alex asked his fire type. It shrugged in response. "Alright." And they continued on, into a spot surrounded with bushes.

Suddenly, there was a scream and Alex and Charmeleon looked at each other, what was that?

"Should we go check that out?" Alex asked. Charmeleon nodded, so they ran in what they hoped was the direction of the scream.

Another shout was made, and this one was more audible and sounded like 'help'. The trainer and pokemon entered a clearing where the angry girl from Trainer's Plaza, Megan, was standing and shaking, staring down at a little purple pokemon. That purple pokemon, was Nidoran.

"What's going on?" Alex asked Megan.

"Like I'd tell you why!" Megan tried to sound tough, but her voice quivered.

"Come on! Your shaking madly and it has to be for something serious!" Alex yelled, quickly getting irritated by this girl's tough attitude.

Megan closed her eyes for a second, then opened them and spoke, "Okay, I was out training and I decided to battle, that!" she pointed at Nidoran, "But it beat my team, it's tougher than it looks, and it seemed to poison my team every time it used Poison Sting."

Alex turned to the Nidoran, then back at Megan, "Your saying this thing is wild?"

"Well, I haven't seen someone come to claim it."

Alex thought about this, he did want to get that Nidoran Prof. Oak offered, but he changed his mind to Charmander, now he has the chance to catch both.

"I think I'm going to catch it," Alex said.

"Suit yourself, I just don't want that near me."

"Alright then, Charmeleon use Flamethrower on that Nidoran!" Alex commanded. The reptile shot flames right at Nidoran, but the poison type jumped very quickly and to their surprise started jumping off the surrounding trees to confuse Charmeleon and land a Double Kick on it.

"It's, so fast," Alex mumbled.

"See what I mean?" Megan said.

"I'm not giving it up though! Flamethrower again!" Alex said. Charmeleon spit fire again but like before Nidoran dodged then jumped off the trees to use Double Kick, only this time after kicking it used Poison Sting in mid-air for good measure.

"Aargh... Okay, let's let it attack first and then we'll make our move," Alex instructed. They waited for the Nidoran to strike, and pretty quickly the speedy thing shot a Poison Sting at Charmeleon.

"Block that with Metal Claw!" Alex commanded. Charmeleon crossed it's extended claws on the front of it's body to protect itself, and since it was a steel type attack the Poison Sting was useless.

"Now what are you gonna do?" Alex taunted to the Nidoran, hoping to make it use Double Kick.

Just as he hoped the Nidoran lunged for a Double Kick and Alex knew what he was going to do, "Now's our chance! Flamethrower!"

"Char!" the fire type lurched forward and bursted fire right at the oncoming poison type. Not expecting that to happen Nidoran dropped the attack and lost it's momentum so it fell to the ground and skidded along the forest floor.

"Now to make sure it's ours use Metal Claw!" Alex pointed at the Nidoran as it got back up. Charmeleon dashed with it's claws glowing a bright silver and slashed at the Nidoran just as it leapt to avoid the attack. With being hit again when it planned to not be, Nidoran fell to the ground, and now it was fainted.

"And now I will finally have a Nidoran! Go pokeball!" Alex said before tossing a pokeball at the downed pokemon. The ball sucked it in and shook several times before stopping and chiming it's completed capture.

He walked over and picked it up, "Got you."

Megan crossed her arms, "Well I helped weakening it, your welcome."

"It still took out your team though," Alex pointed out.

"At least be glad that I found it! If it wasn't for me, you probably wouldn't have come here and caught it!"

"I'll give you that," Alex said.

"Right, now, I'll at least thank you for stopping it from attacking me," Megan thanked, very hesitantly.

"Sure, I don't think it would've attacked, it was probably threatening you to go away, but now that we're done, I need to get going," Alex said as he walked off, giving a small wave.

"Wait!" Megan halted Alex.

"What?"

"Um... I need to get back to the city."

"Can't you go yourself?"

"Well... I'm not exactly good at traveling without protection, pokemon tend to attack me, like I cause this urge to be vicious towards me," Megan told him.

"Uhh... sure, I guess. This will cut into my time but I guess I can come back afterwards," Alex said reluctantly. Megan moved on without a thanks and Alex followed silently behind.

Megan was right! Pokemon did seem to want to attack her! Alex had to fight so many wild pokemon that just seemed to all want and fight Megan, he figured her rough attitude could be sensed by them and did something to them.

"Okay Charmeleon, you deserve a rest," so Alex returned the tired fire type after defeating a big brown rat pokemon called Raticate, which Rattata evolves into. They are a lot tougher than their former purple stage, and take a lot more hits to defeat.

"See what I mean!" Megan said, "It's like they're after me!"

"I can't see why..." Alex said sarcastically as he switched out for Poliwag. Megan shot a nasty look.

"Let's just get back to the bridge, then you can go off on your own!"

"I'm looking forward to that," Alex muttered under his breath. Then, another rustling noise was heard and the two trainers prepared for whatever was coming their way. But instead of it being a Raticate or some other pokemon they expected to come, it was an Abra, possibly the same one from before.

"Abra?" it said as it looked at the two.

"Quick! Let's get away!" Megan shrieked, but the Abra didn't dissapear.

"No! I went out here to catch some new pokemon and I've been hoping to finally catch an Abra," Alex said, then added, "You can go ahead if you like, the bridge isn't that far away."

Megan looked on ahead and saw that he was right but there was still lots of space for attacks, "N-no thanks, I'll stay."

"Okay then, Poliwag use Water Gun!" Alex commanded.

"Poli-Wag!" the pokemon screamed in a high pitch before blasting at Abra. The psychic type dissapeared in a flash, but instead of going away it reappeared to the side of the spray, Poliwag turned but it dissapeared and reappeared again.

"Why isn't it going away?" Alex questioned. Suddenly Abra flashed onto his head and gave a sharp poke before laughing and teleporting in front of Poliwag again.

"Is that thing, playing with you?" Megan asked.

"I have know idea, I just know it's acting strangely... almost, friendly," Alex said, flashing back to his call with Oak yesterday:

_"Trainers don't always pick pokemon because they like the way it looks or for something similar, they also pick ones that they feel they can be friends with."_

_Is this what he meant? Or is this just a special case of what he told me? _Alex thought. _Hmm... _

"Okay Poliwag use Bubble and spread it out so Abra can't teleport safely!" Alex said. Poliwag looked at Alex and tilted it's head in confusion.

"What's the matter? I saw you use Bubble earlier." Confused as well, Alex pulled out his pokedex and searched up his Poliwag's attacks:

_Water Gun_

_ Hypnosis_

_ Tail Whip_

_ Bubblebeam_

"Oh... it's called Bubblebeam!" Alex said in surprise.

"You don't even know your own pokemon's moves?" Megan remarked.

"It's new to my team! Okay use Bubblebeam and spread it out!" Alex barked out.

Poliwag spread it's attack all around, leaving every spot covered in bright blue bubbles, but Abra outsmarted them by teleporting up onto a tree branch.

Alex thought this over, "Okay Poliwag, we need to switch out. Return." And he returned Poliwag then switched with another pokeball. "Let's go with something faster! Golbat go!"

"Golbat!" shrieked the poisonous bat upon entrance.

"See that yellow pokemon? Use Bite on it!" Alex commanded. Golbat swooped after Abra but again the pokemon dissapeared, only to reappear on another branch.

"I have to do something about that Teleport move," Alex said quietly. He looked for something on the field that may help him, or just anything. Immediately he saw the remaining bubbles from the bubblebeam before.

"Golbat switch to Wing Attack and don't stop using it until Abra appears on the ground!" Alex ordered. Golbat swooped again and again at Abra as it teleported to different branches, eventually it came to the last limb and had no choice to think fast enough so it's only choice was the ground.

Abra appeared on a patch of dirt while unkowingly having several bubbles floating right towards it. It turned at the last second but it was too late to teleport as the previously mentioned bubbles bursted on it's body and sent it rolling across the ground, and into more bubbles. In a comical sort of fashion Abra was tossed across the ground by the remaining bubbles that had not popped and was tired after the onslaught of the frothy attack.

"Just to be safe let's go with a Great Ball," Alex said calmly as he threw said great ball at the weakened pokemon. However in a playful manner it laughed and teleported away several feet.

"What?" Alex stared in disbelief. "Alright Golbat, we'll have to go for another way of catching it, stay closeby to it but not where it'll dissapear."

As he said this Alex inched to his tossed great ball and threw it again at Abra. It was about to teleport but he said, "Now use Astonish at it!"

"Gol!" the bat shrieked in it's hoarse voice. The bat quickly came up with it's dark attack and spooked Abra before it could get away. And like before with Poliwag it was in a state of recovering so when it was hit by the great ball it captured it without a single problem.

"I finally caught you," Alex said after the ball chimed it's completion.

"That's great, now can we get back to Cerulean City?" Megan asked impatiently.

"Yeah," Alex said happily. It was strange using that tone with Megan but he was too glad to have caught Abra that he didn't care. He also didn't care that he couldn't catch a Bellsprout, he had three new team members, and even though they didn't have an advantage on water types they were all already strong. He was content with what he had.

After finally making it to the bridge, which meant they were safe, Alex and Megan split apart but since both were heading to the pokemon center they were within sight of each other. The next stretch of time was spent in awkward silence, neither wishing to talk about what happened, Megan didn't like the thought of being helped by Alex, and Alex didn't like the thought of helping Megan.

To their relief they reached the center and Alex made a quick dash to get ahead and heal his pokemon first, Megan fumed silently.

"I'd like to have my pokemon healed please," Alex handed his pokemon to the nurse.

"Alright, I'll take those," the nurse said, accepting the pokeballs and heading to heal them.

Alex smirked at Megan while he waited, "Looks like I get healed first."

"Well you know what, I don't care, I just want to get away as fast as I can and move on," Megan huffed. He turned back to the counter as the nurse came back with his pokemon, which he accepted and headed out the door.

"Alright, next stop, Trainer's Plaza for some training time!" Alex declared. He then proceeded his way to the park for some training to get ready to beat Misty in his rematch.

_ Several things I want to say about this chapter._

_ The first is, I should have mentioned this before, Megan was meant to look like the Lass from the generation three games if anybody was wondering. Secondly, nothing was meant to be going on between Megan and Alex relationship-wise, I tried to avoid that, but the story kept heading that way, and so if anybody thinks there'll be a relationship, there won't. I don't even know if she'll be in the story anymore, maybe later at the Indigo League, but we'll have to see. _

_ But besides that, in the next chapter there will be the rematch with Misty, and we'll see if Alex's team is tough enough to win. _


End file.
